Spot That Fire V3.0
WDSS - Wildfire Detecting Sensor System
Summary
WDSS (Wildfire Detecting Sensor System) is a combination of both hardware and an app that provides warning alerts with its location about forest fires which are in their initial stage or a very close situation for a fire occurs. The main technologies we are using, are GPS and temperature sensors. The authorities which are responsible for putting out fires get aware about warnings via mobile app before the normal people get aware. Let's identify fires before they do huge damages and TAKE ACTIONS for a better world!
How We Addressed This Challenge
In our project, we develop a system which can predict wildfires before it happens or at its initial stage. This includes a hardware which consist of a temperature sensor and a GPS antenna powered by solar power and an app powered by Android or Mac.
Importance of the above mention system is, it directly gives the warning alerts to the relevant authorities. Most of the applications which were developed yet, are friendly with public than authorities. But we all know, capability of putting out fires and making people aware about fires have to relevant authorities. Therefore we introduce an app which can aware authorities and from the same app authorities can aware people about wildfire after checking the spot.
PROCESS
In the process, initially, we have identified the areas in which we launch our wildfire detecting system. For that, we refer the satellite data that is provided by NASA web sites.
After recognizing the most frequently spoiled areas from wildfire throughout the last five years, we can remove all wetlands from these zones using satellite data. And we regard paying more attentiveness to dry zones and areas with the dry wind. In that way, threat zones can be filtered and denoted in the World map. Then we can divide all of them into sectors in each country.
When considering a sector, a fire detecting system is to be placed to cover the whole area. All sensors are to be used to detect if there is an unusually high thermal reading, more than to a given temperature limit. For calibrate temperature limits on the sensors, thermal reading reports are to be used, which contain details about early wildfire temperature ranges in pertinent areas.
If there is any wildfire initially, the sensors will detect it due to the temperature increase. At that moment, the GPS is get ON with the gesture of the sensor that detects the prior wildfire. We use GPS technology with a satellite system to send the alert about the fire to the control station. For that, we hope to develop a mobile app related to the wildfire detecting system via satellites using GPS signals, fire locations, and more details, which will display to the authorized person in the control station.
They have to confirm whether that alert is true or false. For that purpose, the drone system is to be employed. The authorized person will direct a drone for an aimed location and conclude whether there is any fire in that sector. After confirming, he has to take action to terminate the fire in the initial stage.
Below diagram shows how our system works.
Wildfires lost so many things that we can get (such as properties, houses etc.) and can not get again (such as human and animal lives, unique plants etc.). From the records, it says that largest amount of CO and CO2 are emitted to the air from wildfires. Therefore, as the youth generation it is our responsibility to save Mother Earth for the future. Therefore, from our solution we hope to identify and take actions before the damages will happen and save forest coverage to the better tomorrow.
How We Developed This Project
MOTIVATION AND APPROACH
We live in a tropical island with several reserved forests. Even though wildfire isn’t a common occurrence there’s been enough fires burning a good portion of forests in the dry zone during the past few years. But it hadn’t affected us on a personal level. Then around the beginning of the year 2020, the Black Summer season in Australia had the whole world turning their attention on wildfires. The 2019-2020 bushfire season was a period of bizarrely intense bushfires which affected approximately 18,636,079 hectares of land in Australia. More than 9000 building were destroyed, with the inferno killing 34 people directly and another 417 due to smoke inhalation. Nearly 80 percent of the Australian population was affected by the catastrophe.
The damage caused by the fires on wildlife was immense. Nearly three billion species of terrestrial vertebrates alone were affected. Countless animal lives were lost while some endangered species were driven to extinction. Updates on the disaster was constantly bombarded on news and social media, with tens and hundreds of heartbreaking photographs uploaded. We were all devastated. But there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
The worst part about the situation is that this wasn’t the first time it happened. And most definitely not the last. Back around year 2000, scientists predicted that due to the rapid advancement in technology, solutions or methods of prevention will be brought forth within the next two decades. But unfortunately we’re still not close to solving the puzzle.
As people who grew up appreciating and caring for Mother Nature, my teammates and I view a catastrophe of this caliber as a serious issue. As undergraduates who study computer science, we accepted this challenge because we truly wish to come up with a resolution in order to put a stop to this tragedy.
The damage caused due to wildfires can be roughly categorized into two, namely damages which can be estimated by cost and those which cannot. Economists stated that the Australian bushfires may have cost over 103 billion Australian dollars in property and economic loss. But the loss of human and wildlife cannot be estimated by cost. The sheer destruction on the eco system, fauna and flora cannot be recovered through money. As of 2nd of January, approximately 306 million tons of Carbon dioxide has been released to the atmosphere, according to NASA reports.
The major factors which contributed to the spreading of the bushfires in Australia is drastic climate change, weather patterns and global warming. Summers in Australia is known to be of extremely high temperatures and dry weather, with the numbers rising every season. Our team wish to introduce a mechanism to detect wildfires before it begins by gathering metrological data on environmental patterns, thus providing a process to mitigate the fires and mass evacuate humans and wildlife.
HARDWARE
To identify the firing spots (or a spots in danger) small sensor units are installed in selected areas. A sensor unit is consist of a temperature sensor and a GPS antenna. Temperature sensors are calibrated according to the temperature data obtained from satellites. If the temperature near the sensor is higher than the usual value, then GPS antenna gets switch ON and it releases GPS signals. From a satellite which orbits near to the relevant spot can sense the GPS signal. After that, satellite gives that signal to the control station which controls satellite. These sensor units are powered by solar power. One solar panel can power about 10-15 sensor units. Solar panel is implemented on a pillar where sunlight easily falls. Solar power is stored in a battery which is undergrounded. Sensor units are connected to the battery with undergrounded cables. It is done undergrounded because we cared the safety of animals. All battery and cables are covered to be waterproof. Each sensor units also covered their top by a shield as shown in the figure below.
Sensor units are installed as shown in below image; one solar panel and 10-15 sensor units in a circular manner. Sensor units must be installed in a way that all the fire risky areas to be covered.
SOFFTWARE
An app is introduced to give warnings to the authorities and further to public. Followings are the interfaces of app. At the moment we did not develop the app. We hope to build truly native mobile apps with JavaScript and use web skills like React native and CSS, and also using bootstrap, NodeJS ,Express etc. as developing tools. For navigation we expect to use Google Maps.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
For our solution, we used mainly data provided by space agencies on three topics.
- Locations of wildfires which happened in past five years
To find the past firing spots, we took data from the below mention resource. Initially we observed that data about 5 years back and identified the firing spots frequently. Then we divided that areas into sectors and remove all the wetlands( because initial firing spot can not be a wetland.) Therefore the rest of the area is the area where we should install our sensor units.
For an example we choose Australia and below video shows our results
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eByUfQTXsRM5neN4v3Idsk6IEABaujnK/view?usp=drivesdk
Resource :https://earthdata.nasa.gov/earth-observation-data/near-real-time/firms
- Temperature just before the fire occurred
This data is useful to calibrate sensors. As firing temperature of different regions are not same we have to find them separately for the areas. Here, we have faced a problem as from the given site we were unable to take the exact temperature value; instead we got a temperature range.
Resource:https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/JASMES/SGLI_STD/monthly.html?area=g&prod=LST&drct=A
- CO emission before and after the wildfire
This data shows how much of CO emits due to wild fires. From our solution, we take actions at the initial stage of the fire. Therefore the below results will show the amount of CO gas that we can stop before releasing them to the atmosphere by using our WDSS.
Statically taken data from the given resource - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e1BW-M7tQZYXah3Y5g7qSW_xy_2LhoSN/view?usp=drivesdk
https://twitter.com/WRC_Team/status/1312363635260485633?s=19
Resource:https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/JASMES/SGLI_STD/monthly.html?area=g&prod=LST&drct=A