Smart Environment - Early Wildfire Detection using IoT

Abstract: Problems with extreme weather, such as drought, has increased due to greenhouse emissions. As one of the consequences to this, forest fires have emerged more frequently on a global level. This became obvious in Sweden, in the summer of 2018, which has been stated to have been the worst affected year of forest fires in modern time. In a state investigation of emergency preparedness and the operational extinguishing work of forest fires, it was stated several issues with the extinguishing work. One of these issues was the time aspect where the investigation urged that "the importance of quickly detecting arising fires and early efforts to extinguish these cannot be emphasized enough". Today, costly, and unreliable methods are used to monitor large parts of Sweden’s, as well as the world’s, forests. With the help of new technology this is something that can be changed. With a system for detecting a forest fires at an early stage, both economic and environmental benefits can be achieved. In order to cover the gaps that the current fire detection system has, the project aims to develop an IoT-based (Internet of Things) system, with the aim of detecting fires in a forest environment at an early stage and being able to geographically locate the fire. To achieve this functionality, the system must be connected to a network and equipped with sensors. When the system alerts, a predetermined route to the nearest unit in the system suitable for emergency personnel could be sent, as well as an estimated geographical location for the fire based on triangulation, wind direction and wind strength. This leads to a safer working environment for the firefighters who extinguish the fires and less damage to the forest, which makes both forest owners, insurance companies, extinguishing personnel, and society, big winners. By taking advantage of the latest technology in communication and power harvesting, it is possible to create very energy-efficient and self-sustaining units with a long service life that can, after installation, take care of monitoring the forest environment for a long period. During the project various fire detection techniques have been tested and compared. For the need to detect forest fire at a distance, the focus has been on a particle sensor from the sensor company Sensirion. This sensor has been tested in the field together with the fire department in north-western Skåne, the conclusion from the field test show that this particle sensor is able to swiftly detect a fire from 80 metres away. An IoT platform, developed by Sigma Connectivity and Ericsson, has been tested for this purpose with success.