There is an old saying that "fire is as old as time." The earliest evidence of wildfires on earth is based on charcoal remains found in rocks dating back 420 million years. While wildfires may be old, they are evolving and fire researchers are working hard to stay ahead of them.
Canada experiences an average of 8,000 wildfires each year. The number and their severity fluctuates, but anecdotally wildfires seem to be on the rise and impacting more populated areas.
Attacking these wildfires on numerous fronts to safeguard communities against the mounting dangers of fire is the aim of the University of Waterloo's Fire Research Facility (UW FRF).
The lab's co-leads Dr. Beth Weckman and Dr. Vinny Gupta examine some burnt materials inside the facility. UW FRF is one of the most modern and unique in Canada dedicated to fire research and safety education.
"Our understanding of forest fuels and how they burn hasn't been updated in decades," says Weckman, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. "We investigate fires from numerous fronts including how fires respond to the moisture content of invasive and non-invasive species. Climate change is not only influencing temperatures, but it also where we're seeing different plant species."
One of the challenges that researchers face is the language used for describing and analyzing fires. Something as innocuous as how fuels impact fires differ in terminology between forest management and engineering.
"Wildfires present many dynamic problems, yet most of our knowledge and models are founded on understanding of the composition of forest fuels and their environmental interactions from 50 years ago," says Gupta, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. "When you are dealing with wildfires, it gets complicated because a fire is comprised of flames burning fuel parcels smaller than millimetres, but can scale up to tens of kilometres in large events. Sometimes even bigger when you're looking at emission impacts affecting eastern Canada and Europe."
Both Weckman and Gupta point to the importance of approaching fire research with an interdisciplinary lens. "Understanding what fuels fires and their impact on communities, human health and resiliency is vital to informing and developing models that support localized evacuation, firefighting strategies and protect structures," Gupta says.
The two researchers grew up on completely opposite sides of the world but found a common interest in studying fire. Weckman completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Waterloo while Gupta did his studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. According to Gupta, their backgrounds complement one another and help provide a global perspective when undertaking this research.
While satellites and planes collect global wildfire data, it is the local and small-scale research that is tremendously helpful to understanding community risk. Weckman says UW FRF is developing sensing instrumentation for the field that supports the analysis of everything from how certain sources fuel fires to the air quality.
As urban areas encroach upon rural ones, the risks for residents, their homes and neighbourhoods are increasing. It is why updating models for emergency and wildfires is crucial.
"The most sophisticated models we're using today are based on semi-empirical data from the 1970s," Gupta says. "This is one of the prime bottlenecks in using sophisticated computational models and technologies such as AI."
As Weckman and Gupta monitor the smoke in the air from wildfires hundreds of kilometres away and watch daily reports of wildfires across the country, they recognize the importance of the work they are doing to help communities near and far become safer and more resilient.