Application Development for Predicting Fire Spread Rate in Deciduous Dipterocarp Forest at Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Uthai Thani Province

Abstract

The application development for predicting fire direction and fire spread in deciduous dipterocarp forest at Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary, Uthai Thani province. The objective was to find relation of Wiriya (2009) model and cellular automata (CA) model, prepare data of Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary as spatial data, and develop application for predicting fire direction and fire spread from the origin to neighbour area. The application used slope and fuel as the critical factors for predicting spread and direction of fire. The input data will be rendered as raster map layers by using geographic information system and remote sensing methodology. In addition, the data was normalized and stored in MySQL database server. The fire spreading was calculated by applying Wiriya model. The fire direction was controlled by CA model. The underlying technologies and software libraries used in project were OpenLayers, JavaScript, HTML and PHP.

Regarding to the result, the application could anticipate fire direction and spreading from origin to neighbour area by using spatial data of Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary. However, the value of fuel map layer could be more accurate because the useable data was very few. Besides, the lack of weather which one of the three factors of the fire environment because of using merely slope (topography factor) and fuel (fuel factor).

Keywords: application, cellular automata, fire spreading, deciduous dipterocarp forest, Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary