Cobian-Iñiguez Fire Laboratory
Current Projects
Computer vision approaches to fire behavior characterization
Imagery from flames provide data critical to the understanding of fire behavior. Our group develops innovative approaches to characterize flame geometry imagery through methods like computer vision. Our most recent work focuses on developing algorithms to obtain rate of spread from videos of spreading fires.
Materials Flammability
Fires in the wildland urban interface increasingly place people, property and the environment at risk. With global increases in wildfire activity, understanding how fires spread from the wildland to the built environment and between adjacent structures is critical to protecting life and property. In collaboration with materials scientists and engineers, we examine the flammability of novel materials designed to provide sustainable and affordable building solutions.
Fire Wind Tunnel
Wind tunnels have been an essential tool for fire behavior modeling since the 1930's. They provide controlled conditions to test the behavior of wind driven fires for countless applications. Our group will welcome a fire behavior wind tunnel to our laboratory starting Spring 2021. The wind tunnel has been designed by UC Merced Senior Design students and members of the Cobian-Iñiguez laboratory.
