Optimisation Techniques in Wildfire Simulations. Test Case Kresna Fire August 2017.

After the year of 2000 wild land fires are with constant occurrence on Bulgarian territory and the fire season is having two picks one in March - April and another July - October periods. In 2017 wild land fires occurred all over south Bulgaria even in places where fires are not that common. Such place was Kresna Gorge where is located Struma Motor-way part of the EU corridor IV connecting Vidin (North-west Bulgaria) with Thessaloniki (North-west Greece) areas. In this paper we evaluate the available parameters for the Kresna Gorge fire which happened in the period 24-29 August 2017. We are summarizing the novel approaches used in Wildfire Analyst (WFA) tool version 2.8 in comparison with FARSITE tool. WFA is not applied so far for Bulgarian fire events, but have very good potential for real time decision making and this is one of its first assessments for its usage.