Smart forest fire monitoring and detection system

Abstract

wildfire is an uncontrolled fire that occurs mainly in forest areas, although it can also invade urban or agricultural areas. Among the main causes of wildfires are human factors, either intentional or accidental. In recent years, the number and impact of forest fires are expected to grow as a consequence of global warming. In order to fight against these disasters, it is necessary to adopt a comprehensive, multifaceted approach that enables a continuous situational awareness and instant responsiveness. The approaches used to solve this problem included satellite-based systems, optical sensor and digital cameras, wireless sensor networks, manual patrol, among others. Satellite-based systems gather satellite images using two satellites launched for forest fire detection purposes. However, the satellites provide images of the regions of the earth after every two days and this is a long time for fire scanning. Optical sensor and digital cameras produce images after every while. However, the images consist of a number of pixels where the processing unit tracks the motion in the images and check how many pixels contain smoke or fire glow and then it sends the results to another algorithm to decide whether or not to produce an alarm for the operator. However, the images produced may not be clear due to weather conditions hence leading to false alarms. In wireless sensor networks, the sensors sense physical parameters such as temperature, pressure and humidity as well as chemical parameters such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide but they do not necessarily detect fire. The proposed system presents a lot of improvement in the current methods such as detecting and reporting a fire in real-time and providing the exact point in the forest where the fire has been detected. The system users will be alerted of the fire through SMS and a mobile application for appropriate action to be taken to put out the fire.