Wildfire safety with wireless sensor networks

Nowadays, the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) paradigm is extensively used for the environmental monitoring including wildfires. Like other disasters, this phenomenon, if not detected early, may have grave consequences, e.g. a significant pecuniary loss, or even lead to human victims. This paper surveys the approaches to early wildfire detection using WSN facilities with a special focus on real deployments and hardware prototypes. In our work we propose not merely a description, but a classification of the fire detection methods which are divided into three groups: gas sensing, sensing of environmental parameters, and video monitoring. Then the methods are comparatively analyzed from the viewpoints of the cost, power consumption, and implementation complexity. Finally, we summarize our vision of the prospects of resolving the wildfire detection problem using WSNs.

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