A DEVS Front tracking method applied to forest fire simulation
Résumé
Simulation of large scale/high resolution systems usually requires the use of supercomputers to process the large amount of data and calculations. This limitation is mainly due to the fact that large scale of space or time is usually split into node, cells or matrices, and small time steps. This paper presents a novel method that enables the simulation of large scale/high resolution systems. Unlike the conventional explicit and implicit integration schemes, it is based on discrete-event paradigm, which describes time advance in terms of increments to physical quantities rather than discrete time stepping. Space as well is not split into discrete nodes or cell, but polygons with real coordinates. The system is described by the behavior of its boundary (like a fire front), or interface, and evolves by computing collision events of this interface in the simulation. The discrete event scheme generates less overhead because simulation focus only on the interface, and that computations are done only for the evolving part of the interface. A formalization of the method in the DS-DEVS formalism is proposed and the implementation of a forest fire model shows promising results.