3 group meetings into Fall quarter, we’ve stabilized the goal for our project–make a practical and useful imaging device (a camera) to characterize the behavior of burning fire brands (originating from a forest fire, for instance) in order to predict and thus prevent said embers from igniting another fire nearby.

How it all started…
This collaborative project with several other universities is driven by a collective purpose–to enable residents of the wildland-urban interface to prevent nearby forest fires from impacting further communities. Research has already been made in fire brand trajectory and heat capacity, GoPros, and cell phone cameras. With our current 8-person, UCI project team, we hope to create a practical and cheap camera for residents to capture pictures of active, floating firebrands and use image processing and analysis to predict its potential to create another fire.

Our discussions…
Our first two meetings were a lot of spit-balling ideas, trying to find a role that each person can excel in. Dorsa and Dustin expressed high interest in the capturing and processing or images of firebrands, whereas Danilo and Kyra expressed interest in computational combustion. Our advisor, Professor Dunn-Rankin supported us in working in the areas we could excel in, and so we concluded by establishing 2 groups–the Firebrand group (they will work heavily with creating a camera by studying image capturing, filters, and firebrand imaging analysis) and the Chemical group (who will study the chemistry of burning and create a simulation to test the Firebrand’s device).

Let’s dive in…
The Chemical Combustion Sub-Group is studying the chemical reactions of burning embers. We’re starting off by learning softwares CHEMKIN and CFAST to create simulations of burning materials. We’re also learning about fire and what happens when wood burns–where the reaction is, what factors affect it, what visible and invisible reactions are happening, etc.

The goal for Firebrand Sub-Group is making a portable device and an App for cell phones’ camera which is practical, affordable, and easy to use. This device will be capable of analyzing data from images taken from fire to calibrate temperature and energy. Right now the Firebrand Sub-Group is gathering information from firefighters and setting up an experiment for detector testing using MATLAB and LabVIEW.