Home | Behave

What is Behave?

The Behave fire modeling system is a computer program that is used to predict fire behavior in multiple situations. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems but requires either Java or Amazon Corretto to run.

Behave can be used for any fire management application that involves modeling fire behavior, fire containment, and estimates of tree mortality. It requires information about the fuel, weather, and topography on a site. Fuel requirements include fuel models and canopy characteristics. Weather includes information needed to calculate fuel moisture, and wind speed. Topography requires a description of the slope and location on the landscape. These inputs allow users to calculate fire spread rate and intensity, fire size, spotting distance, probability of tree mortality.

The system is composed of a collection of mathematical models that describe fire behavior and the fire environment. It has been completely redesigned to allow for new models to be added when they become available.

The program simulates rate of fire spread, spotting distance, scorch height, tree mortality, fuel moisture, wind adjustment factor, as well as other variables.

Fire Modeling in a Nutshell

Point and spatial fire modeling systems use the same fire behavior models under the hood. Behave is a point system that calculates fire behavior for an area (or point) with homogeneous fuels. FlamMap is an example of a spatial fire behavior system. To give you an idea of how they work together, you can think of each pixel in FlamMap Basic Fire Behavior as being a single Behave run. Certain outputs are only available in Behave, such as the containment equations and four different models to calculate maximum spotting distance.

What's New?

Behave⁷ has been released!

This version has a completely redesigned user interface, updated equations for contain, and shares code with FlamMap to provide consistent outputs for point and spatial modeling systems. Behave⁷ offers most of the same functionality of v6 but is more intuitive to use for both experienced and new users. It continues to run offline for users with limited connectivity.