An agent-based model to assess the forest fires dynamic in the southern Swiss alpine region

Alpine fires are mainly slope-driven, spreading along the forested steep slopes. Fire ignitions are here highly clustered near anthropogenic infrastructures and this characteristic behavior also affects the definition of the wildland urban interface (WUI). This last is known as the area where houses and other human infrastructures meet or intermingle with wildland vegetation, rural zone or forest. The main objective of the present study is to create a simulation model to assess the forest fire dynamic in pilot area located in the in the southern Swiss alpine region. This allows to investigate, for example, the influence of the mobility of people on the fires occurrences by simulating the daily movement of each single active person; or to simulate the displacement of the firefighters over the territory in order to evaluate the efficiency of different fires fight strategies in time. In this preliminary study the core simulation model has been implemented in GAMA, an open source agent based simulation platform. A long term objective is to conduct a study at global scale, over a wider area (e.g. the entire Canton Ticino), to understand the evolution of the WUI in time, analysing the affecting factors like the population growth or of the urbanisation and land use management.