vFireLib: A Forest Fire Simulation Library Implemented on the GPU

Abstract

Forest fire simulation is a complex problem that requires an enormous amount of data processing. In order to operate a spread calculation in real-time, it becomes necessary to use parallel processing. Processing the spread calculations on the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) allows hundreds of calculations to be performed at the same time, which allows the simulator to run up to 20X faster than its sequential counterpart. When the timings take up to half an hour, 20X faster makes the runtime feasible for a real-time application. This forest fire simulation library has the ability to incorporate base fire spread, fire acceleration, crowning, and a spotting prototype into the spread simulation. Three different methods for fire spread have been implemented to provide different perspectives to fire researchers.