EARLY FOREST FIRE DETECTION USING TEXTURE, BLOB THRESHOLD, AND MOTION ANALYSIS OF PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS

Forest fires constantly threaten ecological systems, infrastructure and human lives. The purpose behind this study is minimizing the devastating damage caused by forest fires. Since it is impossible to completely avoid their occurrences, it is essential to accomplish a fast and appropriate intervention to minimize their destructive consequences. The most traditional method for detecting forest fires is human based surveillance through lookout towers. However, this study presents a more modern technique. It utilizes land-based real-time multispectral video processing to identify and determine the possibility of fire occurring within the camera’s field of view. The temporal, spectral, and spatial signatures of the fire are exploited. The methods discussed include: (1) Range filtering followed by entropy filtering of the infrared (IR) video data, and (2) Principal Component Analysis of visible spectrum video data followed by motion analysis and adaptive intensity threshold. The two schemes presented are tailored to detect the fire core, and the smoke plume, respectively. Cooled Midwave Infrared (IR) camera is used to capture the heat distribution within the field of view. The fire core is then isolated using texture analysis techniques: first, range filtering applied on two consecutive IR frames, and then followed by entropy filtering of their absolute difference. Since smoke represents the earliest sign of fire, this study also explores multiple techniques for detecting smoke plumes in a given scene. The spatial and temporal variance of smoke plume is captured using temporal Principal Component Analysis, PCA. The results show that a smoke plume is readily segmented via PCA applied on the visible Blue band over 2 seconds sampled every 0.2 seconds. The smoke plume exists in the 2nd principal component, and is finally identified, segmented, and isolated, using either motion analysis or adaptive intensity threshold. Experimental results, obtained in this study, show that the proposed system can detect smoke effectively at a distance of approximately 832 meters with a low false-alarm rate and short reaction time. Applied, such system would achieve early forest fire detection minimizing fire damage. Keywords: Image Processing, Principal Component Analysis, PCA, Principal Component, PC, Texture Analysis, Motion Analysis, Multispectral, Visible, Cooled Midwave Infrared, Smoke Signature, Gaussian Mixture Model

A framework based on Gaussian mixture models and Kalman filters for the segmentation and tracking of anomalous events in shipboard video

Anomalous indications in monitoring equipment on board U.S. Navy vessels must be handled in a timely manner to prevent catastrophic system failure. The development of sensor data analysis techniques to assist a ship\u27s crew in monitoring machinery and summon required ship-to-shore assistance is of considerable benefit to the Navy. In addition, the Navy has a large interest in the development of distance support technology in its ongoing efforts to reduce manning on ships. In this thesis, algorithms have been developed for the detection of anomalous events that can be identified from the analysis of monochromatic stationary ship surveillance video streams. The specific anomalies that we have focused on are the presence and growth of smoke and fire events inside the frames of the video stream. The algorithm consists of the following steps. First, a foreground segmentation algorithm based on adaptive Gaussian mixture models is employed to detect the presence of motion in a scene. The algorithm is adapted to emphasize gray-level characteristics related to smoke and fire events in the frame. Next, shape discriminant features in the foreground are enhanced using morphological operations. Following this step, the anomalous indication is tracked between frames using Kalman filtering. Finally, gray level shape and motion features corresponding to the anomaly are subjected to principal component analysis and classified using a multilayer perceptron neural network. The algorithm is exercised on 68 video streams that include the presence of anomalous events (such as fire and smoke) and benign/nuisance events (such as humans walking the field of view). Initial results show that the algorithm is successful in detecting anomalies in video streams, and is suitable for application in shipboard environments

Unmanned Aerial Systems for Wildland and Forest Fires

Wildfires represent an important natural risk causing economic losses, human death and important environmental damage. In recent years, we witness an increase in fire intensity and frequency. Research has been conducted towards the development of dedicated solutions for wildland and forest fire assistance and fighting. Systems were proposed for the remote detection and tracking of fires. These systems have shown improvements in the area of efficient data collection and fire characterization within small scale environments. However, wildfires cover large areas making some of the proposed ground-based systems unsuitable for optimal coverage. To tackle this limitation, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) were proposed. UAS have proven to be useful due to their maneuverability, allowing for the implementation of remote sensing, allocation strategies and task planning. They can provide a low-cost alternative for the prevention, detection and real-time support of firefighting. In this paper we review previous work related to the use of UAS in wildfires. Onboard sensor instruments, fire perception algorithms and coordination strategies are considered. In addition, we present some of the recent frameworks proposing the use of both aerial vehicles and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UV) for a more efficient wildland firefighting strategy at a larger scale.Comment: A recent published version of this paper is available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/drones501001