In recent years, advances in computational power have led to an increase in attempts to model the behaviour of wildland fires and to simulate their spread across the landscape. The present series of articles endeavours to comprehensively survey and précis all types of surface fire spread models developed during the period 1990–2007, providing a useful starting point for those readers interested in recent modelling activities. The current paper surveys models of a physical or quasi-physical nature. These models are based on the fundamental chemistry and physics, or physics alone, of combustion and fire spread. Other papers in the series review models of an empirical or quasi-empirical nature, and mathematical analogues and simulation models. Many models are extensions or refinements of models developed before 1990. Where this is the case, these models are also discussed but in much less detail.

In recent years, advances in computational power have led to an increase in attempts to model the behaviour of wildland fires and to simulate their spread across landscape. The present series of articles endeavours to comprehensively survey and précis all types of surface fire spread models developed during the period 1990–2007. The current paper surveys models of an empirical or quasi-empirical nature. These models are based on the statistical analysis of experimentally obtained data with or without some physical framework for the basis of the relations. Other papers in the series review models of a physical or quasi-physical nature, and mathematical analogues and simulation models. The main relations of empirical models are those of wind speed and fuel moisture content with rate of forward spread. The focus of the discussion is on the treatment of the wind speed and fuel moisture functions by the models.

In recent years, advances in computational power have led to an increase in attempts to model the behaviour of wildland fires and to simulate their spread across landscape. The present series of articles endeavours to comprehensively survey and précis all types of surface fire spread models developed during the period 1990–2007. The present paper surveys models of a simulation or mathematical analogue nature. Most simulation models are implementations of existing empirical or quasi-empirical models and their primary function is to convert these generally one-dimensional models to two dimensions and then simulate the propagation of a fire perimeter across a modelled landscape. Mathematical analogue models are those that are based on some mathematical concept (rather than a physical representation of fire spread) that coincidentally represents the spread of fire. Other papers in the series survey models of a physical or quasi-physical nature, and empirical or quasi-empirical nature. Many models are extensions or refinements of models developed before 1990. Where this is the case, these models are also discussed but much less comprehensively.