SUPERCOMPUTERS TO AID FIGHT AGAINST WILDFIRES.Byline: Tim Korte Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Motivated partly by the deaths of 14 firefighters, scientists are trying to use the power of supercomputers once used only to simulate nuclear bomb blasts to help foresters battle wildfires. ``The ultimate goal is to save lives and property,'' said Rod Linn linn n. Scots 1. A waterfall. 2. A steep ravine. [Scottish Gaelic linne, pool, waterfall.] , who is doing the research at Los Alamos Los Alamos (lôs ăl`əmōs', lŏs), uninc. town (1990 pop. 11,455), seat of Los Alamos co., N central N.Mex. It is on a long mesa extending from the Jemez Mts. The U.S. National Laboratory's theoretical division. Rugged terrain and capricious wind can combine to make a wildfire veer unexpectedly. Linn and his mentor, laboratory fellow Frank Harlow, want to prevent another tragedy like the one July 6, 1994, in which 14 firefighters were killed on Colorado's Storm King Mountain by wind-driven flames that suddenly raced up a steep hillside. They plan to use the laboratory's supercomputers, which can run thousands of complex equations simultaneously, to predict how fires will behave. ``We can't predict when certain leaves or branches will catch fire,'' said Linn, but they do want to be able to predict in general how a particular fire might spread. Originally, the laboratory's supercomputers were programmed to simulate the effects of nuclear weapons explosions. Researchers now are applying those principles to other problems. Harlow said the computers have helped develop better internal combustion engines, improve metal casting Metal casting A metal-forming process whereby molten metal is poured into a cavity or mold and, when cooled, solidifies and takes on the characteristic shape of the mold. and find better ways to extract geothermal energy geothermal energy: see energy, sources of. geothermal energy Power obtained by using heat from the Earth's interior. Most geothermal resources are in regions of active volcanism. . They can be used to study economic trends. ``Since we don't have the same weapons needs as they had in past, what should the national labs be pushing?'' asked Linn, a Los Alamos researcher pursuing a doctoral degree in theoretics the·o·ret·ics n. (used with a sing. verb) The theoretical part of a science or an art. theoretics . There is a computerized fire prediction model available now for firefighters, called Farsite, that weighs general weather and terrain variables. But it is compatible with personal computers, not the big, high-speed supercomputers, and is not as sophisticated as the Los Alamos team has envisioned. Once the program is refined, firefighters could send information about a wildfire to the supercomputer through any available telecommunications link Uplink For other uses, see Uplink (computer game) and . An uplink (UL or U/L) is the portion of a communications link used for the transmission of signals from an Earth terminal to a satellite or to an airborne platform. An uplink is the inverse of a downlink. . |
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