High resolution fire behavior monitoring and plume simulation in the context of experimental fire

Coupled fire-atmosphere systems are currently developed to respond to the need of operational system in air quality and fire attack management. This work participates to this effort by proposing a simulation strategy where the plume is simulated using fire observation. Such approach can provide reference test case for more complex coupled fire- atmosphere simulation. Using the Forefire-MesoNH system, we simulate the plume evolution of a landscape scale burn where the fire is not simulated as a spreading front but rather prescribed from multiple fix burners controlled with observation data. The simulation of the plume formed from a 7-hectare savannah fire conducted in Kruger National Park in 2014 is demonstrated using helicopter-borne observations georeferenced at 1-m resolution and post-processed to extract information of heat fluxes at pixel level.Postprint (published version