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Burning Index
The Burning Index (BI) is a number used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to describe the potential amount of effort needed to contain a single fire in a particular fuel type within a rating area. The National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) uses a modified version of Bryam's equation for flame length – based on the Spread Component (SC) and the available energy (ERC) – to calculate flame length from which the Burning Index is computed.
The equation for flame length is listed below:
where:
:*j* is a scaling factor,
:*SC* is the spread component,
:and *ERC* is the Energy Release Component.
Consequently, the equation for the Burning Index is:
::BI=j_1\ F_L
where j_1 is the Burning Index scaling factor of (10/ft). Therefore, dividing the Burning Index by 10 produces a reasonable estimate of the flame length at the head of a fire. A unique Burning Index (BI) table is required for each fuel model.
## References
## References
1. (2011-05-19). ["National Fire Danger Rating System: Indices"](http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sew/fire/olm/nfdr_ind.htm).
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"]
This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Index) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Index?action=history).
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