Title: Experimental Design of a Prescribed Burn Instrumentation,
Abstract: Observational data collected during experiments, such as the planned Fire and
Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE), are critical for progressing and
transitioning coupled fire-atmosphere models like WRF-SFIRE and WRF-SFIRE-CHEM
into operational use. Historical meteorological data, representing typical
weather conditions for the anticipated burn locations and times, have been
processed to initialize and run a set of simulations representing the planned
experimental burns. Based on an analysis of these numerical simulations, this
paper provides recommendations on the experimental setup that include the
ignition procedures, size and duration of the burns, and optimal sensor
placement. New techniques are developed to initialize coupled fire-atmosphere
simulations with weather conditions typical of the planned burn locations and
time of the year. Analysis of variation and sensitivity analysis of simulation
design to model parameters by repeated Latin Hypercube Sampling are used to
assess the locations of the sensors. The simulations provide the locations of
the measurements that maximize the expected variation of the sensor outputs
with the model parameters.