August 19, 2026 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has developed a new framework for early detection of wildfires with real-time modeling that combines various datasets with complex remote sensing capabilities. Understanding real-time wildfire growth patterns and fire dynamics, while accounting for environmental and atmospheric variables, can help emergency officials make life-saving decisions about when to inform an at-risk community or where to stage resources.
The early-warning and decision-support tool synthesizes more than two decades of satellite-based observations and simultaneous fire spread simulations. It accounts for dynamic relationships between hydrologic, environmental (vegetation) and meteorological conditions and synthesizes it with historic fire occurrence data. This nuanced fire risk assessment will help fire management organizations make informed decisions for both prevention and mitigation of wildfires.
“The system we’re developing connects multiple conditions to wildfire risk and offers a dynamic extended-history library that links simulated and observed hydrologic and environmental conditions with wildfire occurrences and characteristics. Users can query the library to link wildfire risk with a full suite of hydrologic, environmental and meteorological parameters,” said the project leader Dr. Dimitrios Stampoulis, a hydrologist and remote sensing engineer at SwRI. “Regions with limited data or those that are particularly vulnerable to wildfires will benefit most from this kind of tool.”
Overgrown vegetation, drought and weather all contribute to the likelihood and severity of wildfires. Stampoulis and his team have demonstrated the ability to identify risk factors up to 30 days prior to a wildfire outbreak.
“Unlike traditional red flag warnings, which only account for wind, our tool will assess additional wildfire risk factors. Evaluating pre-fire-season vegetation accumulation and health, along with hydrological conditions such as soil moisture, will provide an integrated unified solution for the fire simulations,” said Dr. Debashis Basu, a senior research engineer in SwRI’s Fire Technology Department.
This project received funding through SwRI’s Internal Research and Development Program. It combined the Institute’s expertise in hydrological modeling, computational fluid dynamics, fire science and data analytics. In fiscal year 2025, SwRI invested more than $13 million in new and existing projects for tomorrow’s technology to broaden its knowledge base, expand its reputation as a leader in science and technology and encourage its staff’s professional development. To learn more, visit Southwest Research Institute Internal R&D.
For more information, visit Computational Fluid Dynamics Fire Modeling or contact Camaron Brooks, +1 210 522 2357, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166.