  The availability of wildland fire propagation models with parameters
estimated in an accurate way starting from measurements of fire fronts is
crucial to predict the evolution of fire and allocate resources for
firefighting. Thus, we propose an approach to estimate the parameters of a
wildland fire propagation model combining an empirical fire spread rate and
level set methods to describe the evolution of the fire front over time and
space. After validating the model, the estimation of parameters in the spread
rate is performed by using fire front shapes measured at different time
instants as well as wind velocity and direction, landscape elevation, and
vegetation distribution. Parameter estimation is performed by solving an
optimization problem, where the objective function to be minimized is the
symmetric difference between predicted and measured fronts. Numerical results
obtained by the application of the proposed method are reported in two
simulated scenarios and in an application case study using real data of the
2002 Troy fire in Southern California, thus showing the effectiveness of the
proposed approach.
