The phenomenon called “flashover” or “eruptive fire” in forest fires is characterized by a sudden change in fire behavior: everything seems to burst into flames instantly and firefighters are overwhelmed by a sort...The phenomenon called “flashover” or “eruptive fire” in forest fires is characterized by a sudden change in fire behavior: everything seems to burst into flames instantly and firefighters are overwhelmed by a sort of eruption, spreading at a speed at far several meters per second. Unfortunately it has cost several lives in the past. The reasons for such an accident always create controversy in the research field. Different theories are highlighted and especially two major axes are currently subject to discussion because they are very popular among people involved in fire-fighting. The one with regard to VOCs emissions is the best-known among firemen. Under great heat, during summer or with a fire approaching, plants emit VOCs and the more the temperature grows, the more the amount of VOCs emitted grows. Under specific conditions (essentially topographical, meteorological and atmospheric), the cloud of gas can accumulate in an appropriate zone. The concentration of VOCs may therefore reach the Lower Explosive Limit, triggering the burst of the cloud when in contact with the fire. The second theory depends on physical considerations. An example is based on a convective flow created by the fire itself. When a fire spreads on a slope, it creates an aspiration phenomenon in a way to supply the fire with oxygen. The more this phenomenon is important, the more the flames tilt and increase the rate of speed, needing even more oxygen and thus induced flow. This vicious circle can stabilize or have an erratic behavior to trigger off a fire eruption. This article presents these two theories, and especially the new advances on this research subject.展开更多
Every year, the French Mediterranean area is subject to wildland fires. The prevention policy promotes the major role of forest layout, for which it is necessary to build appropriate facilities such as reducing igniti...Every year, the French Mediterranean area is subject to wildland fires. The prevention policy promotes the major role of forest layout, for which it is necessary to build appropriate facilities such as reducing ignition and fire propagation risks near the borders of roads and tracks, creating forest tracks to allow firefighters to move safely through the forest during a fire, creating fuel breaks in order to divide up forests and limit the propagation of fire. Land-clearing along a forest track consists in creating discontinuity between the herbaceous stratum and the tree stratum by eliminating the shrubby stratum and cutting tree crowns. It avoids fire propagation by convection, and enables firefighters to deal with the fire in safety. The main difficulty for forest officers is to identify an optimized method to select appropriate tracks to clear, because it is impossible to clear all the tracks each year. Remote sensing tools would seem to be particularly useful for obtaining the best strategic and economic overview of forest tracks at departmental scale. This theme “land-clearing evaluation method” was selected as a target application for the images derived from the new Pleiades sensors: products and services required by end users. The objective of this work is to assess the real potentiality of such Very High Spatial Resolution (VHSR) imagery for land-clearing management. The methodology used consists in image classification and spatial analysis in order to extract land-clearing quality, and also evaluation of land-clearing quality based on field questionnaires validated through interactions with firefighters and rangers. The development of this methodology and its application to QuickBird images-used as Pleiades data simulations-successfully showed that VHSR Imagery is useful for preventing fire risk. It seems to be a good perspective for providing operational mapping services to help land-clearing management.展开更多
文摘The phenomenon called “flashover” or “eruptive fire” in forest fires is characterized by a sudden change in fire behavior: everything seems to burst into flames instantly and firefighters are overwhelmed by a sort of eruption, spreading at a speed at far several meters per second. Unfortunately it has cost several lives in the past. The reasons for such an accident always create controversy in the research field. Different theories are highlighted and especially two major axes are currently subject to discussion because they are very popular among people involved in fire-fighting. The one with regard to VOCs emissions is the best-known among firemen. Under great heat, during summer or with a fire approaching, plants emit VOCs and the more the temperature grows, the more the amount of VOCs emitted grows. Under specific conditions (essentially topographical, meteorological and atmospheric), the cloud of gas can accumulate in an appropriate zone. The concentration of VOCs may therefore reach the Lower Explosive Limit, triggering the burst of the cloud when in contact with the fire. The second theory depends on physical considerations. An example is based on a convective flow created by the fire itself. When a fire spreads on a slope, it creates an aspiration phenomenon in a way to supply the fire with oxygen. The more this phenomenon is important, the more the flames tilt and increase the rate of speed, needing even more oxygen and thus induced flow. This vicious circle can stabilize or have an erratic behavior to trigger off a fire eruption. This article presents these two theories, and especially the new advances on this research subject.
文摘Every year, the French Mediterranean area is subject to wildland fires. The prevention policy promotes the major role of forest layout, for which it is necessary to build appropriate facilities such as reducing ignition and fire propagation risks near the borders of roads and tracks, creating forest tracks to allow firefighters to move safely through the forest during a fire, creating fuel breaks in order to divide up forests and limit the propagation of fire. Land-clearing along a forest track consists in creating discontinuity between the herbaceous stratum and the tree stratum by eliminating the shrubby stratum and cutting tree crowns. It avoids fire propagation by convection, and enables firefighters to deal with the fire in safety. The main difficulty for forest officers is to identify an optimized method to select appropriate tracks to clear, because it is impossible to clear all the tracks each year. Remote sensing tools would seem to be particularly useful for obtaining the best strategic and economic overview of forest tracks at departmental scale. This theme “land-clearing evaluation method” was selected as a target application for the images derived from the new Pleiades sensors: products and services required by end users. The objective of this work is to assess the real potentiality of such Very High Spatial Resolution (VHSR) imagery for land-clearing management. The methodology used consists in image classification and spatial analysis in order to extract land-clearing quality, and also evaluation of land-clearing quality based on field questionnaires validated through interactions with firefighters and rangers. The development of this methodology and its application to QuickBird images-used as Pleiades data simulations-successfully showed that VHSR Imagery is useful for preventing fire risk. It seems to be a good perspective for providing operational mapping services to help land-clearing management.
