WARNING: The Burn Period (.BPD) File has been deprecated with version 6.1.
Burn periods are required for a Farsite simulation.
The Burn Period (.BPD) File is a file of dates and times that specify daily burning periods. It is an optional file that is used to stop the simulation during periods of low activity, such as cool, moist nights. It can help correct the tendency of FARSITE to over predict fire growth rates when environmental conditions essentially stop fire growth. These periods can occur at night or during foggy weather. Although the dead fuel moisture content does increase during these periods (in reality and in Farsite) the fire behavior models are not sensitive enough to these moderate conditions to predict zero fire spread. Thus, Farsite can over predict fire growth during these periods because the very low fire spread rates are accumulated over long periods of time and result in significant spread distances.
This feature can also be used to speed up simulations by "turning off" the simulation during periods of low fire behavior that have little effect on the final results.
Each Burn Period (.BPD) File must contain data in the space delimited ASCII format specified below. A generic text editing application such as Notepad or WordPad, or a spreadsheet, can be used to create or edit ASCII text files.
The Burn Period (.BPD) File has the following format;
Month Day StartHour EndHour
Remember the file actually defines the periods of burning activity, not the periods of inactivity.