Digital Image-based Modeling of Fuel Energy Distribution in Urban Areas

Buildings in urban areas are the primary component of energy consumption and social activities. Buildings are complex and interdependent systems, extremely vulnerable to threats from both natural hazards and terrorist attacks, whose aftermaths have a strong impact on the global environment. Thus, an accurate estimation of fuel energy from urban buildings is important for the study of climate change. Here we determine the mass of combustible materials from buildings and their contents such as interior finishes and furniture as well as construction materials such as wood and asphalt. The calculations considered four factors, building functions (including commercial, educational, entertainment, public utility, residential and high-rise apartment), structure types (wood, reinforced concrete and masonry), built year (since 2000) and country or region (US, Europe, China and India). The mass of combustible materials and the physical dimension of buildings were considered as a spatial distribution on a pixelized digital map with 30x30m resolution for the target city. For each pixel, several parameters were used: ratio between mass of fuel and land area, building height, ratio between surface area and volume of buildings, and weighting parameter. These parameters for a digital-image-based map of a city will then be used as inputs for the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for the propagation of fire hazards and the estimations of soot quantities generated by a regional nuclear war.