Simard’s Fire Spread Model of Peatland in Kalimantan

Abstract

Peatland fires in Indonesia have become a serious problem because they cause huge losses. Geographical factors of peatlands in the Kalimantan contribute to the difficullty of conventional fire fighting. The current solution is water bombing using a helicopter. Water bombing is expensive and has a high risk for the safety of fire fighters/helicopter crew so must be done with the correct calculation to fire position so that firefighting can work effectively and efficiently. Therefore, mathematical calculation of the fire position is very important. The position of the fire can be determined by knowing the rate of spread of the fire (Rate of Spread / ROS). In this study aims to calculate the rate of fire in peatlands along the Trans Kalimantan road between Palangka Raya and Pulang Pisau, Central Kalimantan using the simard’s model. Land surface temperature (LST) data were obtained from the TERRA MODIS satellite which was downloaded from the website https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/index.php. The results of the calculations for the five triangles obtained that the ROS are 0.03m/s, 0.04m/s, 0.04m/s, 0.04m/s and 0.03m/s for R1, R2, R3, R4 and R5 respectively. The average of ROS is 0.037m/s with a direction of 32.57 degrees.