Adaptive Wildfire Firebreak Controller

Wind

Wind speed 1.2

Wind direction 0°

Firebreak Controller

Total material budget 3.5

Controller responsiveness 0.35

Live Readouts

Forest intact

100%

Elapsed

0.0s

Containment status

Holding

How it works

A cellular-automaton wildfire spreads across a forest grid every simulation tick. A burning cell ignites an unburnt neighbour with probability

P = p0 · (1 + k·max(0, d·ŵ)) · (1 − S)

where d is the direction to the neighbour, ŵ the wind unit vector, and S the local firebreak suppression (0–0.92) — so fire spreads fastest downwind and slowest through a well-built break.

Six firebreak segments line the containment edge. Each tick, a segment measures the heat flux approaching it:

Φᵢ = Σ 1 / (1 + distance) over burning cells in its sensing zone

A controller then reallocates the fixed material budget B toward the hottest segments and lerps each segment's width toward that target:

targetᵢ = 0.15·B/N + 0.85·B·Φᵢ/ΣΦⱼ
widthᵢ ← widthᵢ + η·(targetᵢ − widthᵢ)

Wind speed / direction — sets how aggressively fire advances toward the break line and which segments face the highest flux.
Total material budget — the finite amount of firebreak width the controller can distribute; spread thin, no segment fully blocks the fire.
Responsiveness η — how fast the controller reacts to a flux reading; too low and it lags behind a shifting front, too high and it oscillates.

Real firebreak crews make the same trade-off: limited dozer-line length or retardant has to go where the fire is actually pushing, not spread evenly along the whole perimeter.

Unburnt forest Burning Burnt Firebreak segment

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