Aaron Westbury

Wildfires represent a significant threat to populations in close proximity to wildland areas, often referred to as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). To investigate evacuation in response to wildfire emergencies, a freely available modelling platform has been developed, called WUI-NITY. The platform is built on the Unity3D game engine and allows for the representation and visualization of wildfire spread, pedestrian response, and traffic movement during wildfire evacuation scenarios. Since three different modelling layers are implemented in WUI-NITY (fire, pedestrian and traffic), efforts have been made to improve the links between models. In particular, an improved trigger buffer model called k-PERIL has been integrated within WUI-NITY to allow for the identification of trigger buffers around a community that, once crossed by fire, indicate the need to begin evacuation of that community based on wildfire-and population-based inputs.