Bushfires as complex systems: a proposed PhD study

Full text: At its simplest, a bushfire is a series of chemical reactions moving through a fuel bed. However, the behaviour of a free-moving bushfire burning through the landscape is complex and complicated, operating over many temporal and spatial scales, from seconds and millimetres for the combustion physics and chemistry up to hours and kilometres for the convection-atmospheric interactions. A PhD study is proposed that will investigate the behaviour of a bushfire as a complex system, utilising the many tools and techniques that have been developed for analysing complex systems. These tools include cellular automata and statistical mechanics, dynamical systems theory, stability and bifurcation theory, and data assimilation. Copyright (2005) Australian Institute of Physics