Early Wildfire Detection Technologies in Practice—A Review

As fires grow in intensity and frequency each year, so has the resistance from their anthropic victims in the form of firefighting technology and research. Although it is impossible to completely prevent wildfires, the potential devastation can be minimized if fires are detected and precisely geolocated while still in their nascent phases. Furthermore, automated approaches without human involvement are comparatively more efficient, accurate and capable of monitoring extremely remote and vast areas. With this specific intention, many research groups have proposed numerous approaches in the last several years, which can be grouped broadly into these four distinct categories: sensor nodes, unmanned aerial vehicles, camera networks and satellite surveillance. This review paper discusses notable advancements and trends in these categories, with subsequent shortcomings and challenges. We also describe a technical overview of common prototypes and several analysis models used to diagnose a fire from the raw input data. By writing this paper, we hoped to create a synopsis of the current state of technology in this emergent research area and provide a reference for further developments to other interested researchers.