Title:　A Research Program on Extreme Fire Behaviour
Speaker: Prof. Domingos Viegas

From: Association for the Development of Industrial Aerodynamics (ADAI), Portugal
Date: Apr. 16, 2014
CV of the Speaker:

Prof. Domingos Viegas was the founder and director of the Association for the Development of Industrial Aerodynamics (ADAI) since 1990. He was the full professor since 1991 at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra. He was graduated in Mechanical Engineering in Lisbon (1972), PhD in Mechanical Engineering (Aerodynamics) in Coimbra (1982). His research interests included industrial aerodynamics, wind engineering, forest fire propagation. Prof. Domingos Viegas was the head of a research unit on forest fires at the University of Coimbra that was active in this field since 1986. He was the coordinator of several research projects and contracts in this field supported by national and international funds, and the coordinator of several scientific meetings and short-courses on the above mentioned subjects, including six International Conferences on Forest Fire Research, held in Coimbra in 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010.
Prof. Domingos Viegas gave invited lecturer at a number of international conferences and author of more than fifty articles in peer reviewed journals on the topic of forest fires. He was supervisor of a large number of Master and Doctoral Thesis in this field of research and Co-supervisor at the University of Coimbra and other Portuguese and non-Portuguese Universities and Member of PhD. Juries in Spain, France, Australia, Switzerland, Finland, U.K. and Italy. He was invited as an expert in the area of Forest Fires by the European Union.
Prof. Domingos Viegas was a member of the enquiry committee designated by the government to investigate two accidents with fire fighters in 2006 in Portugal and one in Croatia in 2007. He was an expert called by the court to report on three accidents with fire fighters, in 2005 and 2006 in Portugal and one in Spain (2005), an expert called by the Portuguese National Assembly to report on the situation of Forest Fires in Portugal (2003) and a witness expert at a litigation court case on the Canberra (Australia) 2003 bushfires. Prof. Domingos Viegas was invited by the Spanish Ministry of Environment to integrate a National team to investigate possible forest fires related incidents in 2011. He was a member of the evaluation panels of the National Science Foundation (FCT), National Agency for the Innovation and Technological Development (ADI), and Rectory Council of the Portuguese Universities (CRUP). He was a member of the National Council for Education (CNE). Prof. Domingos Viegas was associate editor of the International Journal of Wildland Fire from its start in 1991 until 2001, member of the editorial advisory board from 2002 to 2005 and Chairman from 2006 to 2007. He was reviewer for several international scientific journals.
Abstract:

Extreme fire behavior has been a hot topic in fire community during the recent years. Extreme fire behaviors usually play essential roles in the acceleration of large wildfires, and basically involve significant interactions among heat transfer, fluid mechanics and combustion, leading to new challenges for wildfire researches. Until today, extreme fire behaviors have been poorly understood. Challenges on extreme fire behaviors include physical mechanisms and dynamics of different extreme fire behaviors in steady states, critical conditions for transition among different extreme fire behaviors, and applied models for fire management under practical conditions of fuel, meteorology, and topography. This lecture introduces the recent progress in a research program on extreme fire behaviour. Researches on eruptive fire, jump fire etc will be summarized.