Research focus |
Vegetation flammability and wildfire prediction and behaviour |
Commercial opportunities |
Industry partnership, consultancy |
Potential impact |
Rapid wildfire detection and suppression |
Of interest to |
Fire agencies, forestry services, land managers, infrastructure companies, local authorities, etc |
The wildfire challenge
In July 2026, a major incident was declared in the Cairngorms National Park, and wildfires in France and Spain forced an estimated 375,000 people to evacuate their homes. In 2025, Scotland recorded its largest-ever wildfire across moorland in Carrbridge and Dava in the Highlands. Major incidents in Los Angeles in January 2025 and South Korea in March 2025 underlined the same problem worldwide. Fire agencies and land managers need better tools to predict and manage wildfire behaviour.
Predicting fire behaviour: research from a world-leading centre
Dr Zakary Campbell-Lochrie is a Lecturer in Fire Science at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Edinburgh Fire Research Centre, one of the longest-established and largest fire research groups in Europe. The Centre's experimental work is carried out at the Rushbrook Fire Safety Laboratory, with high-performance computing supporting numerical modelling. Researchers also conduct field experiments in collaboration with fire agencies globally, such as the US Forest Fire Service, New Jersey Forest Fire Service, and Calgary Fire Department.
Dr Campbell-Lochrie has built his expertise on vegetation flammability and wildfire behaviour, developing software tools that predict fire behaviour using laboratory and field experiment data. This multidisciplinary approach allows researchers to understand fire propagation at scales ranging from individual vegetation samples to complex wildland fires covering multiple hectares.
Working with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh and national fire agencies, Dr Campbell-Lochrie is using rapid advances in space data and Earth Observation to make wildfire modelling more accessible to fire agencies and land managers. The work is supported by the University's 'Living Lab' and Digital Research Services, which have enabled the creation of a new database to improve predictions of fuel moisture and wildfire behaviour.
Current development uses satellite data to inform site-level decisions in nature conservation areas and key infrastructure locations. Recently, Dr Campbell-Lochrie has also been developing complementary, ground-based sensor-based approaches to wildfire risk monitoring through a Data Driven Innovation Fellowship funded by the Bayes Centre.
From prediction to suppression: automated detection technology
A further strand of the research is developing an automated system for rapid wildfire detection and suppression, using drone swarms and satellite data to identify and extinguish fires at an early stage. The project also investigates how different suppression methods perform against different vegetation types, to improve both prevention and response.
This work is a collaboration with the University of Southampton, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M Forestry. It was selected as a semi-finalist in the XPrize Wildfire competition, a four million pound global prize for wildfire technology.
The rising frequency and severity of wildfires worldwide calls for better predictive tools and technology. Dr Campbell-Lochrie's research, based at the Edinburgh Fire Research Centre, is developing both the modelling tools to predict wildfire behaviour and the detection systems to respond to it faster, to reduce risk to life, property and the environment.
To discuss collaboration, fire agencies, forestry services, land managers, infrastructure companies, local authorities, and technology partners, etc., interested in this research can contact Dr Lorna Jack, Business Development Executive at Edinburgh Innovations.
Contact: Lorna.Jack@ei.ed.ac.uk
Learn more
Last updated July 2026
