Micro-scale Forest Fire Weather Index and Sensor Network

Micro-scale fire weather index (FWI) system locates impending bushfires to their exact locations well before their occurrence and remotely alerts the authorities with detailed fire management information. It enables high temporal and spatial resolution of information on bushfire activity. This is considered ideal for early warning system of bushfire-prone regions. A large number of low-cost, intelligent and wireless sensors are deployed within the area of interest with the sensors located at short distances apart. These sensors intimately interact with the physical environment of the bush/forest floor and gather the necessary information which is shared among the neighbouring sensors wirelessly. The information is fed to the hazard prediction algorithm embedded into each sensor unit to generate an alarm for any fire hazard and for data management. The system could be organized to alert the fire management authority timely via the available backbone communication (GSM, Internet or satellite) link.