FIRE PREVENTION MODELIZATION AND USEFUL INTERACTIVE APPS

 

For citation, please see this publication on the American Institute of Architects 2025 blog as well.

Models are abstractions, idealizations of the “real” object.

A computerized simulation is generated by a software that intends to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. The computerized models were created in the II World War, with the purpose of simulating a nuclear detonation. After some years, the mathematical models proved to be very useful in the analysis of biological-natural, economical, social, technological, urban systems, among others. 

The models’ purpose is to find analytical solutions to real problems and predict the behavior of a system given a series of parameters and initial conditions. 

Computer fire modeling uses mathematical equations and computer algorithms for predictions of variable fire dynamics. It is essential to prevent fire damage and enhance the safety of people, buildings and environments.

The accuracy of fire modeling depends on the complexity of the model, the quality of input data and how sophisticated the software is. Here we summarize some of the most relevant.

An interesting experience is to work with Cellular Automata (CA). Originally designed by John Von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam  in the 1940’s, CA is a grid of cells that evolve over time according to rules that regulate how the cells change over time, depending on the state of neighboring cells. 

The free CA software Vision of Chaos developed by the company Chaos Group,  has a basic application focused on fire spread that could be useful to predict the behaviour of wildfire in a forest. It is a simulation that architects could use as a tool during the design process.

In September 2024, Dr Michael Gollner (associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley) and his team at the school’s Fire Research Lab, released a new type of model published  in the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.  The researchers created digital models of the historical Tubbs and Thomas fires in the USA to understand their progression. The model’s predictions achieved an accuracy exceeding 85% for fire perimeters and around 70% for the damaged houses. This model is the first to fully reflect how fire moves through structures. (The Guardian US) 

 

The current scientific advances with the utilization of cross data from weather and hazard forecasting has allowed the transition from forecasting fire weather to actual fire activity.

On April 1st 2025 researchers from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) published a more complete modelization called Probability of Fire (PoF) in Nature Communications . The model uses satellite  data on fuel characteristics, ignitions, forecasts and observed fire activity to enhance its accuracy. It also adapts in real time to changing patterns of physical and human behaviors and has the potential to improve the prediction of wildfires. The most important aspect of this model is the incorporation of social interactions and human-influenced hazards, since humans are still modifying the environment.

An interactive map can be seen on pyrecast.org where we can select fuels, weather, risk and active fires. It allows all users, including homeowners and developers, to evaluate the fire hazard conditions of every lot in the USA. The following screenshots are from Los Angeles county and surroundings.

Fire prediction based on weather

Fire risk prediction based on statistics 

The map is supported with more information published on blogs and wildfires simulations on Pyregence.

Creek fire, 2020. From Pyregence.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which is part of UL Research Institutes, contributes with continuous research using large scale experiments in combination with softwares like Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) to explore fire behavior that is very difficult to understand during experiments. 

Setting aside sophisticated scientific models, we recommend the free App “Watch Duty” which contains real-time information relied on radio scanners, firefighters, reporters, government agencies and satellite data. Apart from the maps with different visualizations, the App provides evacuation zones, animal shelters, meal distribution locations, weather reports, notifications, emergency contact groups and preparation checklists.

We all know we have to coexist with fire. Both fire and egress modeling should be used by design and safety professionals to enhance protection, improve architectural design and emergency response strategies. 

Before and after: Seattle Waterfront

 

Seattle waterfront. May 2019. Myriam Mahiques' archives

I've been traveling to Seattle since 2019 and I find all the several construction works very interesting.

I have seen the Bullit Center which is the greenest commercial building in the world; I have visited the museums -being the Pop Art museum by Frank Gehry my favorite one-, the Public Library designed by Rem Koolhas, the Gas Works Park designed by landscape architect Richard Haag, and the Seattle tunnels among other buildings and places. Such is my interest about the urban morphology of Seattle, that I bought "Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle's Topography", a book by David B. Williams which I highly recommend, most of all if the reader is a grading engineer. Reading the book I understood what the "spirit of Seattle" means. 

No matter how difficult the demolition, the construction is, they will always manage to do it. 

Along the years, I focused my interest on the waterfront works. During my first visit I saw the demolition works of a freeway parallel to the sea, and I was wondering what they would do. I could enjoy the results last November 2024, since the new Aquarium, the pedestrian bridge, a great portion of the landscape have been completed.

The next pictures are some of my thorough compilation since 2019:

Seattle waterfront. May 2019. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. Before the playground. May 2019. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. May 2019. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. I find this storage facade as a negative impact of the overall city view. July 2020. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. Here the storage again. See how precarious the planters were, and the lack of landscape design. July 2020. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront, before the new deck and playground. July 2020. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. The bridge and the new Aquarium under construction. June 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. The bridge and the new Aquarium on the far left. June 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. June 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. June 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

I do not know if the old Aquarium will be left. There is a playground under construction and there is still planting going on. 

Most important of all, the terraces and bridges are all accessible via staircases, ramps and an elevator adjacent to the new Aquarium.  This is the first pedestrian connection between Seattle Downtown, Pike Place Market and the Park Promenade. The gap between downtown and the waterfront is 100 feet.

This is good to know, if we remember the first urban staircases in Seattle were built in wood; the ladies had to pay men in order to get help to ascend the staircases with the long dresses, and some men passed away while trying to go upstairs while drunken. 

It is so nice to see people gathering, and enjoying the views. The sunset is beautiful as seen from the terraces.

This post will be completed as soon as I come back.

Seattle waterfront. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. The new landscape with native bushes and flowers. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. The new ramps, the landscape with native bushes and flowers. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. A perspective of one of the ramps surrounded by native landscape . November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Seattle waterfront. The continuation of the works and planting of new landscape. November 2024. Myriam Mahiques' archives

Thoughts on "The Wall of Gazes" exhibited at the MOOLA

 

I had the real pleasure of visiting the current exhibition Arteonica at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, CA. There were the works of several artists, from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, Brazil. 

The work that impacted me the most was "Wall of Gazes" by Argentinians Mariano Sardón and (neuroscientist) Mariano Sigman. The videos, depicted as transforming portraits were mesmerizing. 

All portraits are superimposed images in videos, the algorithms keep on changing until the face is formed or partially formed. 

From Ars Electronica:

"The Wall of Gazes consists of one screen in which visitors can see how portrait images are revealed by the eye movements of many persons simultaneously. Gazes were captured by an eye tracker device. Around 100 participants were seated in front of a portrait image and the device recorded their gazes for 15 seconds. The screen is connected to a computer and a special software displays the eye tracks stored in a database. Portraits are ever-changing composition, according the gazes captured and displayed by the software." 

The eye tracking data was generated at the Muntref Centro de Arte y Ciencia. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Buenos Aires.

It immediately came to my mind the relationship between architectural perception and neuroscience. I researched a little more about this project, and I was pleased to see that it was applied to migrants' memories, to movement, from one country to another as well.

From Mariano Sigman's page:

"Hiwa K tells that border officer ask immigrants questions about the map of his hometown. Most immigrants, like anyone who is asked random questions about the geography of their city, fail the test. This story is the inspiration of our project. We live in small, sparse fragments of our city. The road to school, the bus to our grandmother’s house, the square where time passed relentlessly. Each person has her own city. In this work we investigate this distant memory of an individual’s memory of the city in which they lived. We looked a map while we heard stories by people who moved from Mexico to the United States, from Syria to Austria, from Bolivia to Argentina. Then we reconstruct this, cutting the trajectory of the eyes on a paper map. Because of its own lightness, this map bends when it leans on wood and forms bridges that connect places that are distant in the city, but close in memory."

I think that it would be a step forward to "measure" the perceptions on the architecture that is affected by the dwellers' memories and traditions. In other words, to leave the 2 dimension of the map and see what happens when people is confronted with cultural information on the built environment. And which is the perception of people while observing this, depending on their nationalities and or their studies degree, their intellectuality. For example, I was walking in my neighborhood and saw the -following- homage for the Day of the Dead. The neighbors, I assume, must be Mexican or descendants, but living in the USA, and are expressing themselves with their hearts. Regretting the losses of their young relatives. 

These articulations, the fine details, the offerings, have a real impact on architecture, the altar is like becoming part of it. The facade is completely integrated to the force of culture. Definitely, the three dimension would be worth of farther analysis. 

Altar in my neighborhood, Long Beach, CA. From my personal archives, November 2024.

*All pictures by Myriam Mahiques, November 2024. Please do not share without permission.

Contemporary spatiality: experiencing a multitude of cells

The Euclidean display and overall design of a room inside the MIT museum, Cambridge. Personal archives, 2024

Inside the MIT museum, Cambridge. See how the free standing displays have the same conceptual design as the displays on the wall. Note the shape of the benches as well. Personal archives, 2024.

 I have been thinking about current semiology in architectural spatiality. There is a new meaning based in our contemporary digital pre-conceptions, the different options of spatial relationships and representation techniques. We are becoming more skilled at abstracting the external stimuli, hence the qualities of the objects, since we have so much available information and optical devices to select, being the cell phone the most typical example that allows us to see the world filtered through cameras....

Spatial cognition depends on many factors: our culture, our experience, gender, age, social context, etc. I am particularly influenced by long years working on urban morphology with different mathematical software, but this time, I have also felt impressed by my recent visit to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Harvard museums. The architectural arrangement of the MIT technological exhibition captured my attention as unusual -due to my unconscious expectation of a typical exhibit- . At least in one room, the objects were enclosed by cubes defined by linear lighting. Every cube or rectangular prism, could be seen as a cell. So I missed the interior object in order to recreate the spatiality of the room, or even the wall, since it became a 3D Euclidean construction at a short distance, so pure and strictly mathematical.

Harvard Museum of Natural History. See the many reflections on the glass displays. Personal archives. 2024.

Harvard Museum of Natural History. See the many reflections on the glass displays. Personal archives. 2024.

Of course my mind is ready to understand and digest the contemporary exhibit, but when I visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History, I was walking among glass cells, which is quite different from the other Natural Science museums. All of a sudden, the 3D cells were conforming space, and progressively, there was this feeling of being dehumanized, one is immersed in a multitude of reflections (our own and the animals'), like a in mirror maze; the archaeology becomes part of the fantasy. 

Immersive Van Gogh, Los Angeles. Personal archives, 2021.

Immersive Van Gogh and the static experience. Los Angeles, personal archives, 2021.

Somehow, the historical composition in Harvard is a sort of prelude to the imaginary current immersive experiences, like Van Gogh's among so many others, with a substantial difference though, the cells and their contents are tangible, the person walking along the displays is lured by the animals, and the experience is dynamic, interactive, the space is re-created by the circulation towards a point of interest (a window, a staircase, an exit....), while the immersive art is realized with distant projections in an empty building, usually a warehouse, where people stand or sit still and the space is conceived by just one's mind perception of the moving images; the orientation is given by the location of isolated structural elements, like a staircase or columns.

Aerial view of Los Angeles Downtown and suburbs, California. Personal archive, 2024.

The spatial perception becomes completely different when we change the scale or the point of view.

I still remember the first time arriving to Los Angeles by plane, I was wondering where is Downtown? My first impression was the industrial flat areas with so little landscape, all of them rectangles. And a colleague of mine reminded me the great purpose of Los Angeles: the creation of movies in an extended city that sells lots of cars: in consequence, the industrial zoning is quite noticeable. 

This year, I had the chance to enjoy the aerial views that I am sharing here, and finally I have seen Los Angeles from above and afar, all blue filtered by the plane window and the residential low areas with lots of dark green. I made the effort to zoom my cell phone camera as much as I could, but for every capture, my impression was that I was looking at a pixelated city. Without history or social input, I was observing the result of Zoning codes, a map created with pixels, quite monotonous, even in its third dimension, and monochrome. While the plane was flying to destine, the view was still a multitude of little cubes and prisms like a projection on the ground where I was not immersed at all. For me was another version of the museums cells experience.

Aerial view of Los Angeles Downtown on the left and suburbs with a huge industrial area, California. Personal archive, 2024.

Antoine Picon, in his article "Anxious Landscapes: From Ruin to Rust" (2000) * on a similar idea, adds the concept of distance and texture, as explained in the following excerpts:

"...the anxious character of many contemporary landscapes is the indication of profound transformations affecting the definition of the subject who contemplates them,..."

"....this is not the first time that the look that we cast over our surroundings has been modified. Each time, such a transformation proves inseparable from a mutation of the ideal image we project of ourselves."

".... one cannot help by be struck by the extent of the mutations that already affect the category of vision."

".... familiar forms seem to give way to luminous effects -scintillations, iridescence, reflections- as well as to textures often based upon contradictory impressions like smoothness, glossiness or graininess. Configurations, both immediately perceptible by the senses and more abstract, substitute themselves for the contours of the world that is familiar. Seen by satellite, Los Angeles doesn't look much different from a section of matter observed in a microscope. The importance of the dominion of lights and textures in the contemporary technological landscape could well originate from this transformation in the categories of vision . Such a transformation leads us to suspend, if only provisionally, questions such as those of "far" and "near." Who tells us that it's Los Angeles we're contemplating, instead of a piece of sidewalk?.... the contemporary urban landscape is organized according to textures that owe more to woven design than to form in a traditional sense."

* From Architectural Theory. Volume II. An Anthology from 1871-2005. Page 595. Massachusetts, 2010.

A partial detail of a tapestry exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is similar to an aerial view of a residential neighborhood and a central district. Personal archives, 2024.

Urban Fractality and "The Concise Landscape"

 

Binary aerial picture of an area of Downton Buenos Aires

Binary aerial picture of a the historical sector of Downtown Boston

There are many publications about the analysis of the Fractal Dimension of different cities in the world. Each publication leading to conclusions about the methods used, and sometimes a projection of the city growth in the future, given a certain pattern.

I took a rest from writing about the subject, I traveled instead, and took notes and lots of pictures of the (visited) cities perceptions to open my mind to several urban morphologies, which at first where focused on Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. This year, I went to waterfront cities, among them, Buenos Aires and Boston, and I immediately realized their Fractal Dimension would be pretty similar. But the perception, the experience of said cities, are radically different.

I selected two downtown areal pictures of them, and decided to run a quick analysis of their Fractal Dimension, using the ImageJ medical software. As a side note, ImageJ has newer versions: Image J2 and Fiji. But I could not upload jpgs, pdfs and pngs files with them, so I returned to the original old version.

If it were a strict analysis, I would have drawn the buildings solids and streets emptiness with Autocad, but for the purpose of this post it was not necessary, and I even left the Google references and the trees, which we may be considered or not part of the urban morphology, depending on the research objectives.

Buenos Aires Fractal Dimension and Boston Fractal Dimension of the first two binary images

The results for the first two images were, respectively, Buenos Aires 1.8462 and Boston 1.8130

I have also considered inverting the solid and empty areas, to test if the results are quite different or not. Here we have two binary images inverted for both cities:

Buenos Aires aerial binary image, inverted.

Boston, binary aerial image, inverted.

Then I took the Fractal Dimension of both inverted images:

Buenos Aires, inverted fractal Dimension= 1.8402

Boston, inverted Fractal Dimension= 1.8654

There is not a significant change in the results, so I'm taking an average of 1.8. Now, let us see how different the plot surfaces are:

Surface plot of Buenos Aires, where we can read the urban orthogonal grid.

Surface plot of Boston, with more morphological irregularity.

When I was in Boston, one of my favorite urban books "The Concise Landscape", written by British architect and urban designer Gordon Cullen in 1961, came to my mind. It was the first book I have read on urbanism. Walking around Boston contained the perfect examples to illustrate the book, most probably due to its British origins, while Buenos Aires grid is Spanish.

For us who work on Urban Morphology based on science, (and sociology in my case), I think that somehow, Cullen has stated a visionary concept on page 8 of the 1971 edition:

.."we have to rid ourselves of the thought that the excitement and drama that we seek can be born automatically out of the scientific research and solutions arrived at by the technical man"....

And he takes into account the perception of the city, in general terms, and per my brief summary below:

. Element of surprise and serial vision.

. The relationship between urban buildings is different with added elements (trees, water, traffic, etc...).

. The relationship between our human body with space and scale.

. Content: colors, texture, scale, style.... -I will add the weather-.

In other words, even if we have the same or similar Fractal Dimension between two cities, our experience of them is not the same. 

For example, Boston has tunnels of traffic circulation, while Buenos Aires streets are wide open (it does not snow in Buenos Aires) with long -French- perspectives and monuments as focal points. We are not allowed to have such a view in Boston, when you walk or drive in Downtown, there is always a building or block intersecting the perspective, giving us the feeling of "being inside" the city.

I am posting some of my pictures for better explanation, they belong to my personal archives, dated 2022. Please do not share without my permission.

Let us begin with Buenos Aires:

A typical avenue in Buenos Aires and the infinite perspective

A street in Buenos Aires with eclectic styles (French, Spanish...)

The corner is usually designed as an important element. See the trees, the mullions, the light color. The British green is incidental, just for doors here.

More interesting corners of Buenos Aires. The beautiful corner cupolas everywhere.

A street of Buenos Aires which is slightly winding. The gray cement "medianeras" (demising walls), the cupolas and most of all, this morphology of "decayed teeth", which is a result of different zoning regulations along the years. The balconies, for residential and offices uses as well, add architectural articulation.

 One of the many monuments in Buenos Aires, as seen from a car.

Nocturnal view of Downtown Buenos Aires. The endless avenue with aligned trees, the "decayed tooth" morphology.

Now, let us continue with some pictures from Boston:

Access to the underground train, a broken perspective, lots of materials together. The typical Boston brick (there are different colors), modern glass and classical gray finishes.

The British colors and the broken perspective. See that the green extends beyond the doors. The red is added for commercial purposes.

An open plaza among buildings. We feel "inside". Note the lack of balconies.

A broken perspective and lack of balconies.

This is pretty interesting for me, the building at the end of the perspective is rotated.

Broken perspective and the use of dark color.

The serial vision with columns on the front. The broken perspective while the urban lamps are perfectly aligned.

This is a picture of the Beacon Hill neighborhood, with the brick buildings combined with the English deep green. But, here, more textures are added with a climber on the left. This type of climbers are unusual in Downtown Buenos Aires (the Ciudad Autonoma) but the sidewalks are wider and with lots of trees.

To get to the Boston Tea Party building, on the waterfront, I had to walk through a park so covered in vegetation. It took me a while to find the water, but here it is, the element of surprise.

Of course I could find common elements between the two cities, but they would be isolated examples.

It is clear that a fractal urban analysis cannot get rid of The Concise Landscape basic but primary teachings. Any research should be completed with historical and social facts in order to deeply understand the urban shape, this is not only a matter of numbers. This is what makes us architects more extensive and less scientists in our points of view, compared with physicists and geographers who share our field of research.