To date there has been no systematic fire behaviour modelling carried out across UK fuels and environmental conditions. We therefore lack the systematic understanding of how UK fires behave in terms of designing a FDRS. Some inferences may be made from similar fuel types examined elsewhere (grass, conifers), however, for key UK fuels, such as those that dominate heathlands, no applicable fuel models exist and hence no fire behaviour estimates have been generated. Addressing this research gap is not only critical to the future development of a robust UK FDRS but will present an advance of international relevance given that these fuels pose a wildfire risk in other temperate oceanic regions in Europe and overseas.

Key research questions

RQ4.1: What modelling approaches may best be utilised to model fire behaviour in key UK fuel types?

RQ4.2: How do such models perform when set against observations from field scale experimental fires (WP3) and previous major UK fire events?

Planned deliverables

D4.1: Spatially explicit qualitative and quantitative fuel model descriptors for key UK land cover types.

D4.2: Empirical dataset of the relationships between fire behaviour for different meteorological conditions in key UK fuels.

D4.3: Assess the potential for estimating UK Fire Behaviour using physical modelling approaches

D4.4: UK severe fire hindcasts to test the outcomes in extreme conditions

Key organisations and team members: Swansea University (SD, CS, TN), London School of Economics (TS)