Programming the watchers
“Basically we want to use drones to provide solutions in an environment that may be dangerous to humans or very tedious,” Zhang says.
The system would require a permanently airborne fleet of drones patrolling pre-programmed flight paths around or near areas that are believed to be fire-prone. Using historical data provided by agencies like Natural Resources Canada, the drones, equipped with sophisticated optoelectronic technology, would capture visual or infrared images. These can be either automatically processed on board or sent to a human-supervised ground station for identification and, ideally, automatic identification with the software being developed. A ground-based human would generally oversee the coordination of any response required.
If the presence of a fire is confirmed, nearby firefighting authorities can be contacted via smart phone alert. Thanks to the information gathered by the UAVs on-board technology, the alarm sent by the UAV agent can also include crucial information like the size and location of the blaze.
Smart drones
Zhang and his team are also developing algorithms that would help the UAVs track blazes and predict where they might spread. This is still a relatively young field, though some models, using visual or infrared cameras, have achieved a high level of accuracy in predicting fire behaviour in different conditions.
Still, the authors warn that much work remains to be done.
By maturing these algorithms through future rigorous testing, Zhang and his colleagues think that a robust and reliable UAV forest fire monitoring system may very well be the next step in more effective, and safer, prevention programs.
Read the cited paper: “A Survey on Forest Fire Monitoring Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.”