SwRI develops dynamic framework to better predict wildfires
Decision support tool can help prevent and mitigate wildfires, ultimately to save lives
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Developed through Southwest Research Institute’s Internal Research and Development Program, SwRI’s new early-warning and decision support tool offers a framework for anticipating wildfire behavior using real-time modeling to combine various datasets and complex remote sensing capabilities.
view moreCredit: Southwest Research Institute
SAN ANTONIO — 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 https://www.swri.org/markets/chemistry-materials/fire/fire-research-engineering/computational-fluid-dynamics-cfd-fire-modeling.
After wildfires near the California Coast, human and animal fecal bacteria in urban and wildland areas end up in coastal waters
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Sunrise by the ocean during a wildfire in Goleta, CA.
view moreCredit: Carl Swindle
After wildfires near the California Coast, human and animal fecal bacteria in urban and wildland areas end up in coastal waters.
Article URL: https://plos.io/4gcJ0To
Article Title: Coastal water bacterial responses to wildfires in California: A twenty-year investigation
Author Countries: United States
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Scoping review suggests drinking water is often contaminated with arsenic following wildfires in the region
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Change in arsenic concentrations pre- and post-wildfire.
U.view moreCredit: Willeford et al., 2026, PLOS Water, CC-BY 4.0
Scoping review suggests drinking water is often contaminated with arsenic following wildfires in the region, especially when mining, agricultural, or urbanized areas were burned.
Article Link: https://plos.io/4qgvqmB
Article Title: Wildfire mobilization of arsenic into water resources: A scoping review of current literature
Author Countries: United States
Funding: Support was provided in part by a research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) (R01ES035878 to JR). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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