Early Forest Fire Detection Using Drones and Artificial Intelligence

Forest and urban fires have been and still are serious problem for many countries in the world. Currently, there are many different solutions to fight forest fires. These solutions mainly aim to mitigate the damage caused by the fires, using methods for their early detection. In this paper, we discuss a new approach for fire detection and control, in which modern technologies are used. In particular, we propose a platform that uses Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which constantly patrol over potentially threatened by fire areas. The UAVs also utilize the benefits from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and are equipped with on-board processing capabilities. This allows them to use computer vision methods for recognition and detection of smoke or fire, based on the still images or the video input from the drone cameras. Several different scenarios for the possible use of the UAVs for forest fire detection are presented and analyse in the paper, including a solution with the use of a combination between a fixed and rotary-wing drones.