MOSCOW, Idaho – University of Idaho students research wildfire behavior as they look for new innovative solutions.
Students have begun designing a prototype to understand and mitigate wildfires as they work with biological engineers.
This project is more than just working with fire as they aim to lower the risk of future fires with new tools.
“This isn’t just playing with fire,” said Peter Wieber, a recent biological engineering graduate involved in the project. “We’re providing a wildfire research tool for the world.”
The future tool being designed is a device that can produce embers for observing and testing ember-structure interactions in controlled environments and mimic real wildfire conditions.
“This device provides a safe way of understanding the mechanisms for how heat and fire impact everything from structures to plant physiology,”
“This device provides a safe way of understanding the mechanisms for how heat and fire impact everything from structures to plant physiology,” said Alistair Smith, project sponsor and professor and department chair in the U of I Department of Earth and Spatial Sciences.
