FireInSite: an Accessible, Integrated Fire Behaviour Prediction System for the UK and Ireland
FireInSite is a user-friendly, automated decision support system developed for the UK and Ireland that predicts fire behavior by integrating local fuel and weather data with the Rothermel model, thereby addressing the lack of accessible wildfire management tools in humid temperate regions.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Wildfire is no longer just a story of dry forests and scorching summers in distant lands. In the humid, green landscapes of the United Kingdom and Ireland, the risk of vegetation fires is rising, driven by shifting weather patterns and changing plant life. For decades, fire managers in these regions have lacked a specific tool to predict how a fire would behave once it started. Existing systems were built for the dry, fast-burning ecosystems of North America or Australia, where the rules of fire are different. In the damp temperate climate of the British Isles, the fuel is often wet, living vegetation like heather and gorse, which changes its flammability throughout the year as the seasons turn. Without a way to understand these specific conditions, land managers and emergency services have been forced to guess at the danger, relying on general weather warnings that do not tell them how fast a fire might spread or how high the flames could reach.
To solve this, a team of researchers has created a new digital system called FireInSite. This is a user-friendly web tool designed specifically for the UK and Ireland, allowing anyone to point to a location on a map and instantly see a detailed forecast of fire behavior. Instead of requiring users to gather complex data about soil, wind, and plant moisture from multiple sources, the system automatically pulls in the local weather, the shape of the land, and the specific type of vegetation growing there. It then uses a massive collection of real-world measurements to calculate how likely a fire is to start, how fast it will move, and how intense the flames will be. The system is built on four years of intensive fieldwork, where researchers collected thousands of samples of plants like heather, gorse, and bracken to measure exactly how much water they hold and how much heat they release when they burn.
The core of this new system is its ability to track the changing state of plants throughout the year. In humid regions, the danger of fire is not just about how dry the weather is today, but about the life cycle of the plants themselves. Some plants, like heather, burn most intensely when they are alive and full of sap, while others, like dried grass, burn best after they have turned brown and died. FireInSite accounts for these subtle shifts. It knows that a patch of gorse in July behaves differently than the same patch in March, and it adjusts its predictions accordingly. By combining this deep knowledge of local plants with real-time weather data, the system can tell a fire manager that a fire starting in a specific field of gorse might produce flames of a certain height, or that a fire in a grassy area might spread at a specific speed.
The researchers tested the system by comparing its predictions against real fires that had already occurred. They gathered reports of flame heights from past wildfires, including the large fire at Wennington in 2022, and checked how closely the system's forecasts matched what actually happened. The results showed a strong agreement, proving that the tool can reliably predict fire behavior in these complex, wet environments. Since its launch, the system has been adopted by fire and rescue services, land managers, and conservation groups across the UK and Ireland. It is now being used to plan for fire prevention, to train emergency responders, and to make critical decisions during active fire events. By turning complex science into a simple, accessible map, FireInSite gives communities the clarity they need to prepare for and manage the growing threat of wildfires in their own backyards.
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