Unmanned aerial vehicle based forest fire monitoring and detection using image processing technique

Abstract

Early forest fire alarm systems are critical in making prompt response in the event of unexpected hazards. Cost-effective cameras, improvements in memory, and enhanced computation power have all enabled the design and real-time application of fire detecting algorithms using light and small-size embedded surveillance systems. This is vital in situations where the performance of traditional forest fire monitoring and detection techniques are unsatisfactory. This paper presents a forest fire monitoring and detection method with visual sensors onboard unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Both color and motion features of fire are adopted for the design of the studied forest fire detection strategies. This is for the purpose of improving fire detection performance, while reducing false alarm rates. Indoor experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the studied forest fire detection methodologies.