Research Article Applying Probability Theory for the Quality Assessment of a Wildfire Spread Prediction Framework Based on Genetic Algorithms

Copyright © 2013 Andrés Cencerrado et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This work presents a framework for assessing how the existing constraints at the time of attending an ongoing forest fire affect simulation results, both in terms of quality (accuracy) obtained and the time needed to make a decision. In the wildfire spread simulation and prediction area, it is essential to properly exploit the computational power offered by new computing advances. For this purpose, we rely on a two-stage prediction process to enhance the quality of traditional predictions, taking advantage of parallel computing. This strategy is based on an adjustment stage which is carried out by a well-known evolutionary technique: Genetic Algorithms. The core of this framework is evaluated according to the probability theory principles. Thus, a strong statistical study is presented and oriented towards the characterization of such an adjustment technique in order to help the operation managers deal with the two aspects previously mentioned: time and quality.The experimental work in this paper is based on a region in Spain which is one of the most prone to forest fires: El Cap de Creus. 1