IOT BASED FOREST FIRE SYSTEM

Hrithwik Dhanapal 1
Department of CSE, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Potheri, SRM
Nagar, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu 603203.
1hrithwikdp999@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper presents a forest fire detection and alerting system based on Internet Of
Things. Here a specific fire prone environment is monitored continuously and in
case of detection of fire, the user is alerted remotely. This is implemented using a
node Micro Controller Unit and a number of sensors for detecting different
physical parameters involved in a fire related incident and a camera with image
processing capabilities for the image and the geographical location of the device
that detected the fire. The project focuses on the continuous real time monitoring
of the environment remotely by making use of cloud servers to attain a continuous
flow of values and information regarding the environment remotely to a device
such as a Smart Phone with access to the internet from anywhere around the
world. The project aims at implementing and creating a low cost device with
greater detection capabilities to reduce false alarms and pinpoint fires to a greater
degree of accuracy and help with the prevention of large scale forest fires that
cause unmitigated destruction to precious environments.
Keywords: Forest Fires, Sensor Network, Image Processing, MQTT, IoT

1. Introduction

The biggest problem with forest fires is that once a fire gains momentum and has
reached a massive scale, it becomes extremely difficult to stop and control and the
only possible outcome at that point is to let the fire take its course. A normal forest
fire can be partitioned into three stages: Usually, the grass and the dry
undergrowth touch off and ignite first. This results in a ground fire, which is
slightly easier to control and subdue. In the event that it develops into an out of
control wildfire, it can jump into the treetops, particularly on the account of
conifers, prompting a crown or shelter fire where the fire spread rapidly. Crown
fires are much more harder to control and subdue and can without much difficulty
grow into a large scale wildfire which is practically impossible to extinguish. The
only solution to these fires is their early detection. Hence what we require is a
system that can alert us early and remotely the moment a fire is detected in a forest
fire prone area so evasive action may be sought after in the ground fire stage itself.
These fires can lead to massive amounts of destruction of precious flora and fauna
and can adversely affect human lives if left unchecked and unattended. The device
is particularly effective in areas that are deemed as forest fire prone hot spots.
These Hot spots are areas deemed to easily combust from a number of factors such
as location, dryness, rainfall, vegetation layout, topography, fuel load and other
factors and are thereby ideal for testing a localized device over a set area.

2. Literature Survey

The concept of a smart forest is mostly derived from IoT. In these type of forests,
remote sensing is used to collect useful information about the conditions inside the
forest.The end goal they have arrived at is to devise a solution based on Edge
computing which uses the concept of M-Hubs which are mobile hubs that uses
multiple number of sensors simultaneously to monitor the environment and to
relay this information to the hand held devices of forest guards. [1].
The Wireless Sensor Network Simulator is created and formulated based on
developed and pre existing sensor models and Wireless Sensor Network models.
This WSN Simulator accounts for a variety of design issues, for example, the total
deployment and coverage of the region that is under reconnaissance comparable to
the first initial sensor arrangement, absolute number of sensors required for
reaching and covering the target area, and the required changes in coverage
requirement during the passage of time. The information presented has been useful
in modeling the project device with respect to the sensors needed for a singular
device and the probable area that a single device can scope to cover on its own [2].

The proposed model in this paper is an energy efficient fire identification and
alarming procedure using three dimensional organization of multi-sink wireless
remote sensor network. The model can be utilized in multiple modes which are
event driven, time driven or a consolidated combined mode. The outcome of this
model have been contrasted with other three dimensional adaptations of routing
protocols used in sensor networks[3]. Remote sensor arrangements ordinarily
comprises of various distributed small nodes, which are distributed and set in
remote and difficult to reach areas that are sensitive and prone to forest fires
distributed about a very large area [4].

Information gathering is an issue in WSN and in IoT in light of the fact that the
data must be accessible rapidly and adequately with no deferrals and redundancies
in the process. The proposed model has multiple algorithms that are distributed for
composite event detection and reporting this back to the mobile sink. When the
information is gathered by the sink, it is then shared over the IoT system. The
WSN et simulator analyzes the performance of the algorithms which is
specifically created for use with event driven WSNs. Different types of data and
information such as the average number of f hops taken to reach the sink and the
average residual energy left and success rate and percentage of composite events
that are processed at the sink [5].

There are are a multitude of reasons for the utilization of image processing
techniques for the use of forest fire detection.The examination proposes a
successful forest fire identification strategy utilizing methods of image processing
including movement recognition in the contained area on the basis of
segmentation of colour and background subtraction techniques. The calculation
utilizes the YCbCr color space which is more useful in isolating the luminance
from the chrominance and has more efficient rates of detection [6].

Dynamic surfaces are quite regular in day to day scenes. Instances of dynamic
surfaces in video are smoke, fire, trees moving in the wind, clouds, the sky, waves
in the sea and so on. The fire is described utilizing effective highlights and
identification of the similar utilizing an appropriate processing. Each pixel is
checked for the presence or in turn the lack of fire utilizing shading highlights, and
behaviour of fire is additionally dissected [7]

Fire identification has not been executed in FPGA till this technique. For this
reason this model gives a very innovative technique for fire recognition making
the use of parallel modules. A brilliant coloured item with high levels of intensity,
and high levels of red that moves unpredictably and changes shape often is
identified as fire in the proposed model. The objects that behave in this manner
besides fire are very very low. For this reason is why the false detection rates are
so low for this method.[8]

The fire location framework dependent on LUV shading space and its further
addition with hybrid systems is proposed. The generation of smoke and the
overall appearance of the fire can be joined together to decrease the reaction time
of the framework. Movement of fire and the zone ablaze by the fire when joined
with the colour recognition system improves the preciseness of the framework [9].

In the first technique movement recognition is done utilizing Gaussian Mixture

Model-based subtraction of objects from the background area which is used to
distinguish moving objects from a video stream. After this step a detection step
that is multiple color-based also joins the RGB, YUV and HSI to make out the
actual areas that are on fire in the video stream. Then the final step is carried out
by combining both these techniques to get the accurate layout of the areas of fire
in the video stream [10]

Three major aspects of the fire are considered for detection purposes in this
technique. They are the colour of the flame measured from the side to the centre of
the flame ranging from white to red, the form and the peaks of a flame and the
degree of circularity exhibited by the flame or the object in consideration. Since
forest fire temperatures are extremely high, the spectrum of the fire is almost
always in red. If there are no red ones detected in the entire monitored area, it is
established that there is no fire. this significantly quickens the detection and
effectiveness of distinguishing fire and other objects present in the video stream
[11]

Background subtraction methods are used to detect the region of interest of smoke
and flame , along with this objects that are not smoke and flame are identified and
discarded using the probability model. These procedures are basic core ideas used
for lessening the computational time required for the fast detection of smoke and
fire [12].

3. Proposed System

Through the analysis of the limitations of the previous systems, it has been
concluded that the next system required is one which is self sufficient as a
standalone device that can survey a larger area to be monitored while keeping the
systems required to be more simpler. The cost effective option should provide
more monitoring coverage for the amount spent to construct it. Besides the use of
these sensors, image processing techniques is incorporated to cover a much larger
area so more number of sensor systems are not required to cover the same area and
to solidify the result and prevent false alarms. Further confirmation of Fire
detection is done with the help of image detection and this too can be relayed
remotely for alerting.This system consists of the main node micro controller unit,
the WiFi module, the subsequent sensors required and the camera for image
detection. Node MCU is an IoT based controller board with an on board WiFi
module called ESP8266. All the subsequent sensors are connected and interfaced
with this board. Here two parameters are being monitored continuously-
temperature and the presence of smoke. For sensing the temperature, an LM35
temperature sensor is used. For sensing smoke a gas sensor called MQ6 is used.
Also a Passive Infrared Sensor is used for detecting high peaks of infrared
radiation. All the data read from the sensors is uploaded to a cloud server called
ThingSpeak for continuous monitoring from a remote location. Once the sensor
values exceed the thresh hold values for a fire, an alert is sent to the smartphone
via the MyMQTT app. Python programming and OpenCV library are used for the
image processing functionality. Once detected, the picture of the fire and the geo
location of the concerned device is intimated remotely again to the user via SMTP.

Fig.1: System Architecture

Fig 2: Sensor Flow Diagram

4. Hardware Specification

Node MCU: A Node MCU is an IoT platform which is fully open source and of
low resource and cost. The firmware used in this system runs on ESP8266 WiFi
Soc. ESP-12 is what the hardware components on the system are based on. This
enables network capabilities. All the sensors are interfaced with this controller.
Node MCU has a one channel ADC this presents a problem since there are two
analog sensors. The MCU only has a one channel ADC so it is not possible to
connect the two sensors. This can be solved by adding an ADC module called
MCP3008.

Fig 3: Pin configuration of Node MCU

Passive Infrared Sensor: A Passive infrared sensor is capable of measuring the

intensity of Infrared Radiation emanating from objects in its level of
detection.These sensors can detect movement based on the level of radiation. This
can be modified to be suitable for fire detection. The amount of radiant heat
received or reflected from objects around it is what is used for detection purposes.
They are also called Passive Infrared Detectors (PID).

Fig 4: PIR Sensor

MQ-6 Gas Sensor: The MQ-6 sensor is mainly used for the detection of carbon
based gases. This sensor is highly sensitive to propane, iso-butane, and others
such as LPG and LNG. This sensor can detect mostly all forms of common
combustible gas. The material that is used to sense this inside the sensor is Sn02
which has a lower level of conductivity in clean air when a combustible gas is
present, the sensors conductivity increases in proportion to the concentration of the
gas. The sensor gives out the level of concentration of the as an analogue voltage
reading that is proportional to the concentration of the gas. The sensor also has a
comparator on board where the detected value can be compared to a pre existing
preset value and based on this it can give out a digital high or low value. This
sensor can be easily interfaced with an arduino or a raspberry pi board. The sensor
can also be used to detect propane, butane and other natural gases too.

Fig 5: Mq-6 Gas Sensor Pin Configuration

LM35 Temperature Sensor: This sensor provides us with the ambient

temperature surrounding it. The output voltage presented by the censor is directly
proportional to the centigrade temperature directly outside the sensor. It is an
integrated circuit sensor. This sensor is much more useful over standard linear
temp sensors whose calibration is usually set in the kelvin scale. Therefore there is
no need for the subtraction of a constant voltage from the read value to obtain the
temperature in the scale of Centigrade value. It is a linear output, low impedance
device with inherent calibration making it very easy to interface with circuitry.

Fig 6: LM35 Sensor Pin Configuration

Camera Module : A basic camera setup such as a webcam is used to interface

with the board. Using image processing techniques adopting the Open Source
Computer library, fire is detected in the captured area. IR sensitive cameras may
be used to further increase sensitivity to flames in the image.A picture of the fire
and the geographical location of the Node at risk is sent remotely as an E-mail.
This is done using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This can be reconfigured to
alert the user in different mediums. MQTT is not used as it is not possible to send
image files with it.

5. Software Specification

Arduino IDE: The main salient feature of the software which is open source is
that it makes it quite easy to implement code and upload it to the required board .
The software works on multiple OS such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The
software is based on processing and other open sourced software and the working
environment is coded in java. This software is usable with with any kind of
 compatible Arduino boards. The code for the functioning of the sensors are
implemented using this platform.

Python 3.6: Python has been chosen for the project because of the easy use of
the simplicity it presents for this kind of code in its syntax and tight integration
with many image processing libraries. Here, the version that is used is Python
3.6.7.

MyMQTT: MyMQTT is a free android app from the System Maintenance

subcategory, part of the System Utilities category. MyMQTT can be used to view
messages pushed from your device to the server or publish messages from the
server to your device. This is ideal for testing and debugging since one is able to
display live information from a device or sensor in real time.

6. Output and Results

Sensor Output: This module deploys a Serial Output Display which displays the
sensor values in Real time. An alert is created if the values exceed the threshold
value and it is then sent remotely to the MQTT app on the mobile device in case of
detection of Fire.

Fig 7: Sensor Output

Camera Output: Once it detects any abnormal amount of light besides the natural
sources such as sunlight, the algorithm detects the flame and sends an alert if it
detects any abnormalities or concentrated peaks of IR radiation in the monitored
area and sends it remotely to the application. A picture of the detected flame is
enclosed within the alert and the geographical location of the sensor device which
detected it which is pre coded into the device before it is placed in that specific
 location, is sent to the concerned personnel via SMTP so that they may identify
the location of the forest fire.

Fig 8: Alert from the Camera Module

Smartphone Output: Finally all the data from the sensors and the fire detection
alerts are relayed to be viewed from the smart phone using MQTT. This is done
by using the MyMQTT app. The required channels for the data transmission from
the sensors are linked to the subscription part of the app. Once the channels have
been established, the data from the detection device can be relayed through to the
phone. All the values of the sensors and the subsequent fire detection alert if the
thresh hold is crossed is relayed in real time to the dashboard section of the app.

Fig 9: Sensor values

7. Conclusion

The outlook of this project is to create a low cost device that is capable of
detecting forest fires in localized and selective areas that are the most prone to
large scale fires throughout the year. Pre existing systems mostly rely on bulk
information such as massive sensor networks, meteorological data and satellite
imaging. These systems although they are useful in the larger scale of things, do
not contribute to detect a forest fire in its infant stages and only provide
information after the onset of the fire. Trying to detect a fire in its infant stages
with this technology is analogous to trying to find a needle in a haystack. What we
require is a more pin point detection system. The project aims at creating a self
sufficient device that can be placed in these areas, provide much more localized
and accurate detection and imbibed with network connectivity helps alert the
concerned about the fire so fruitful action may be taken. A basic model has been
created that can detects the presence of fire using its on board sensors and is able
to send the Alerts in case of a fire remotely to a mobile device using MQTT
servers. The addition of a camera with image processing capabilities solidify the
level of accuracy of detection of the device and further adds to the remote alerting
ecosystem by intimating an image and the location of the device. Hence, a device
has been developed that helps in the detection of the onset of forest fires early so
that it may be contained to prevent the massive destruction it causes to natural and
human life and to protect the last tracts of these natural treasures of the world.

8. Future Scope and Enhancement

The created model can be enhanced in the future by incorporating newer and
better range of sensors to further heighten the detection capabilities. Other sensors
may be included to further accentuate the detection capabilities. The research into
more efficient energy sources can make this device truly self sustaining by
incorporating solar rechargeable batteries and other modes of power. The
incorporation of a better camera with higher imaging power and capabilities is
crucial in enhancing this project. The use of such a higher resolution camera can
pave the way for a higher range of image detection over a much larger area
thereby reducing the need of multiple such devices to cover the same area of land.
Better imaging algorithms can provide for detecting fires at a much farther
distance from the device. The betterment of IoT can lead to the device needing
much less power and bandwidth and the ability to function on low frequency
networks that can be spread across the entire forest. This project may pave the way
to developing a better device that helps in the detection of the onset of forest fires
early so that it may be contained to prevent the massive destruction it causes to
natural and human life and to protect the last tracts of these natural treasures of the
world.

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