Some time ago, Marty Alexander, Canadian fire behaviour guru emeritus, challenged me to put together a tool for comparing the fuel types within the Canadian Fire Behaviour Prediction System (a sub-component of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System). I had already been interested in comparing the fuel types graphically to aid in fuel typing (deciding which FBP fuel types would best fit various patches of land based on characteristics such as tree species and density). This proved to be a very hand way to learn the details of the calculations within the FBP system.
The result is FBP Graph, an Excel graphing tool that compares spread rate and headfire intensity between up to 4 FBP fuel types simultaneously, with a fair amount of user control over the inputs and appearance. Although some day I may try to convert this to R or some more sophisticated platform, the Excel graphing format was handy for this purpose and should be familiar to most users.
The current version is 2.1, which allows for the x axis to be toggled between ISI (initial spread index) and wind speed, which is handy for forecasting the likely results of wind gusts and diurnal wind changes. Overall, I believe FBP Graph should be fairly self-explanatory to anyone with a good understanding of the FBP system (say, anyone who has been through the CIFFC Advanced Fire Behaviour course). Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Screen shots and download:
FireResearch.ca 