Wildfire Canada 2012

Wildfire Canada 2012 has just finished. I presented some speculations titled "What if we couldn't fight fire?"

It was the beginnings of a study based on simulation using PROMETHEUS (the Canadian Wildland Fire Growth Model) to look at what would happen if the fires we currently fight were left to grow freely. Turns out that a group at the OMNR (Boychuk, McFayden, and Young) are working on similar lines, using a custom model called MORPHEUS. Among other reasons, this was a good reason to come to the conference! Because there are so many practitioners here, it is also a real honor to get to present research and get feedback from the people who might, one day, use it.

I also might have picked up a co-author for a study on burn probability, heard a very interesting presentation by Alan Tsang applying game theory to resource sharing between fire management jurisdictions, and met some other potential collaborators. Between that and the beautiful Rocky Mountains here in Kananaskis, it's been a great week.