ForeFire
The open-source fire-spread simulator built by CNRS / Université de Corse.
Contributor — Dockerization, CMake build, documentation
Maintainer — CI/CD, reviewing and merging PRs, cutting releases
Co-author on the project's Journal of Open Source Software paper
Fire reads
the land
A wildfire simulated right now, on your screen, by ForeFire itself, over a real stretch of Corsica on the edge of the Désert des Agriates. The wind pushes it, it speeds up going uphill, runs faster through grass than through maquis, and stops at the sea. The color shows when each patch caught fire, and each thin line carries the time the front stood there.
Every fire starts somewhere else, with a different wind. It's an illustration, not a forecast of a real fire.
ForeFire by Jean-Baptiste Filippi; browser version by Hugo Fara.
Where the fire
goes next
ForeFire simulates how a wildfire front moves, using real wind, terrain, and fuel data. Researchers and operational teams use it to run "what if" scenarios: where does this fire go in the next six hours if the wind shifts.
At Pantera, it's the same simulator behind our own spread forecasts — turning a confirmed detection into a projected path a brigade can act on.
Open source
The simulator is built by CNRS / Université de Corse. My part is keeping it buildable, reproducible, and documented.
- Since 2022
Contributor — Dockerization, moving the build to CMake, documentation and tutorials.
- Since 2025
Maintainer — CI/CD pipeline, Sphinx documentation, reviewing and merging PRs, cutting releases, and the day-to-day of keeping the project buildable and reproducible.
- JOSS paper
Co-author on the project's Journal of Open Source Software paper, the formal citation for the simulator.
Get in touch
If you're building something in fire simulation, wildfire, or scientific open-source tooling, write to me.