About
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Wind is one of the most influential environmental factors affecting wildland fire behavior. The complex terrain of fire-prone landscapes causes local changes in wind speed and direction that are not predicted well by standard weather models or expert judgment. WindNinja was developed to help fire managers predict these winds.
Purpose
WindNinja is a computer program that computes spatially varying wind fields for wildland fire and other applications requiring high resolution wind prediction in complex terrain. It was developed to be used by emergency responders within their typical operational constraints of fast simulation times (seconds), low CPU requirements (single processor laptops), and low technical expertise.
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Who Uses WindNinja?Running WindNinja
WindNinja can be run in three different modes.
- 1. User specified average wind speed and direction. (Domain Average)
- 2. User specified data from a weather station. (Point Initialization)
- 3. Coarse scale weather models from NOAA. (Weather Model Initialization)
WindNinja also requires elevation data, date and time, and dominant vegetation type. (WindNinja can obtain much of this data from internet sources)
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Features
WindNinja has several optional features.
- 1. Diurnal Slope Flow Model
- 2. Non-neutral Atmospheric Stability Model
- 3. OpenFOAM conservation of Mass and Momentum Solver (only available with Domain Average Initialization)
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Outputs
Outputs of the model can be viewed by a variety of programs
- 1. Google Earth (.kmz)
- 2. ASCII Grids of wind speed and direction for FARSITE and FlamMap
- 3. GIS shapefile for displaying wind vectors in GIS programs
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WindNinja Tutorials on displaying outputs
Specifications
WindNinja can run on Linux and 32/64-bit Windows (XP and higher) (Download Here)
Running WindNinja on Linux requires Building from source
WindNinja can also be built from source on Windows
Hardware Requirements:
- Minimum: 4 GB RAM, 2.0 GHz processing speed
- Reccomended: 8 GB RAM, 2.4 GHz processing speed
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Building WindNinja from Source
WindNinja-Mobile
WindNinja is available as a mobile app. From the app, users can set up and run WindNinja on a remote server, and then download and view the results.
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