Predicting the Extent of Wildfire Spread and Assessing the Applicability of FlamMap-MTT Through Wind Speed Scenario Comparison

This study investigated the effects of wind-speed input conditions on FlamMap’s minimum travel time (MTT) simulation results and its applicability by evaluating multiple wind-speed multiplier scenarios based on a station-based representative wind speed for the 2025 Uiseong wildfire in Gyeongsangbuk-do, Republic of Korea. Representative wind conditions were derived from nearby weather stations using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW), and nine wind-speed scenarios ranging from 1.0 to 5.0 times the representative wind speed were established at 0.5 intervals. Comparison with reference data derived from NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) active fire detections indicated that, across all analysis times, the 5.0-times condition achieved the highest mean intersection over union (IoU) and the lowest area mean absolute error (MAE), whereas the 4.5-times condition recorded the lowest mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the maximum straight-line spread distance (distance MAPE). During the early spread period of 180–300 min, the 5.0-times condition yielded the highest mean IoU, whereas the 4.0-times condition produced the lowest distance MAPE. These results indicate that the most suitable wind-speed condition varied according to the evaluation metric and analysis period. The findings of this study are limited to the Uiseong wildfire case and the applied input conditions and may serve as baseline information for developing wind-speed scenarios for future wildfire risk assessments.