Fire Protection Engineering Department
FPE SEMINAR SERIES
Monday, January 27, 2025
11:00 a.m. - Noon
50 Prescott Street, Gateway II, Room 1226
If a Zoom link is available, an update will be sent Monday morning. This seminar will not be recorded.
A Bricolage of Fire Research at DRI
ABSTRACT
Since the humble beginnings of applied fire research focused on fire-climatology at DRI in 1998, the program has expanded over the years to include fire weather, fire ecology, and social science. Most of the projects are user-inspired activities and some are more applied but still aimed at informing decision or policy. Some current examples include operational fire weather forecasting with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and recently adding the WRF-SFIRE system, standardizing the Red Flag Warning program for the National Weather Service, a leading role in the interagency and interdisciplinary Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, examining the relationship between drought and fire through partnership with NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), and building hi-temporal and spatial resolution gridded reanalysis datasets for Victoria Australia and California-Nevada. This presentation will highlight some of various activities taking place in DRI’s fire program to spark discussion.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Timothy Brown is a Research Professor and conducts applied research and applications development at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nevada. His primary academic interests include wildland fire-climate and fire-weather connections; the wildland fire environment; applications development for wildland fire management planning, decision-making and policy; the interface between science and decision-making; and user engagement through the deliberate co-production of knowledge. He is Director of the Western Regional Climate Center, and established and directs the Program for Climate, Ecosystem and Fire Applications (CEFA) at DRI. He is graduate faculty in the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Nevada, Reno, and quandom Monash University Adjunct in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Science Faculty in Clayton, Victoria, Australia.