Wildland Fire Prediction

Acknowledgments Firstly, I want to thank to my colleagues from DACSO. The help given by them always has been very useful. Thanks to Baker and Mónica for her participation in the experiments, and to Xiao for saving me when I was in a tight spot (talking in scientic terms). I also would like to thank to Ana Cortés and Tomàs Margalef for their corrections and guidance. Thank to Emilio Luque for his help and opinions. Many thanks to the technical sta, Daniel Ruiz and Jordi Valls, for their job (very dicult job, really): solving the problems in the cluster and to help us to solve technical problems. I also want to express my gratitude to the professor Domingos Xavier Viegas and his group of collaborators to allow us to carry out experiments in the laboratories of Lousã and by his hospitality during my stay in Coimbra. It is true that phrase which says: the friends can be counted with a single hand. I feel that my handful of friends helped me every day. Some of them are very far from Barcelona, but I feel their presence. I met new friends in Spain also. With them I shared many hours and ideas. I think that this cultural interchange has been very interesting for everybody not only because of the scientic aspect but also because of our development as people. Luckily, one of my best friends has been to my side all this time: my wife Paola. Only she knows about the large hours of work, the tiredness, the sadness, and happiness which accompanied this doctoral thesis. Everything has been better thanks to her help, opinions and comradeship. Thanks, my dear Paola. My wife, my parents and my brother are my family. I dedicate this work to them. Thanks.