An innovative approach to forest fires detection and monitoring: the EU-FIRE project

Abstract

The EU-FIRE project has the objective of designing a new forest fire monitoring system able to guarantee accurate and continuous surveillance and forecasting, immediate detection of fire beginnings, monitoring of the fire's evolution, and timely exchange of information from fire fronts. The main technological gaps are filled by the integration of optoelectronic and acoustic technologies. The EU-FIRE integrated prototype is based on: (a) A completely new acoustic system for volumetric scanning, based on high directional arrays of microphones, contributing to give a deeper monitoring of forest safety through the possibility of detecting and tracking fires from the beginning by the recognition of their acoustic emission spectrum (i.e. their "sound/noise"). (b) A completely new design of fibre optic sensor networks for temperature and gaseous emissions monitoring installed in grids around sensible infrastructures to provide information on fire movements. Data from fibre optic sensors is collected through new optoelectronic reading units. (c) A completely new acquisition unit for data fusion from both innovative and traditional systems. The project activities covered the characterization of fires' acoustic signature and heat transfer related to fire spread and environmental conditions, type and quantity of material in combustion, background noise, topography, and distance from the source. To achieve these goals, several field tests were performed in 2007 and 2008 -indoor tables and outdoor plots have been burned with different fuels (straw, shrubs, login slash, and pine needles) and environmental conditions. Data have been collected using standard instrumentation consisting of microphones, 2-D and 3-D microphone arrays and fibre optic temperature sensors. Data post processing drove the design of the system in terms of microphones and arrays of numbers and positions, temperature fibre optic sensor installation constraints, etc.