2015 Third International Conference on Image Infonnation Processing
Detection of Forest Fires using Machine Learning
Technique: A Perspective
Aditi Kansal1, Yashwant Singh2, Nagesh Kumar3, Vandana Mohindru4
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
Jaypee University of Infonnation Technology
Waknaghat, Solan- 173234, (H.P ), India
2
1 aditi.kansaI4@gmail.com, yashu want@yahoo.com
Abstract- Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has gained
attention as it has been useful in warning about disasters.
Predicting natural disasters like hailstorm, fire, rainfall etc. by
WSN are infrequent and stochastic. This is an important topic of
research. Detection of these disasters should be fast and accurate
as they may cause damage and destruction at a large scale. In this
paper, comparison of various machine learning techniques such
as SVM, regression, decision trees, neural networks etc. has been
done for prediction of forest fifes. The proposed approach in this
paper presents how regression works best for detection of forest
fires with high accuracy by dividing the dataset. Fast detection of
forest fires is done in this paper by taking less time as compared
to other machine learning techniques.
Keywords: - Wireless Sensor Networks, Regression, SVM,
Sensor, Decision Tree, Classification.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is an area in which
sensors are deployed to monitor specific environmental
conditions (e.g. fire, climate) and send those data to base
station for processing. WSN comprises of data processors
(sensors) with limited battery life [1]. WSN has its own design
and resources which include limited amount of energy, short
communication range, low bandwidth and limited
computation. The ideal sensor node is smart, whose power
consumption is less, capable of fast data acquisition, reliable,
inexpensive and does not need much maintenance.
Event detection procedure is known as an important
component of most of the applications, which facilitate proper
and efficient sensing of the physical world using wireless
sensor network. Event is classified as a repeated occurrence or
pattern of infrequent or abnonnal occurrence [2]. Some harsh
environment may cause faults in pattern matching and pattern
monitoring domain. Event detection is one of the applications
of data observation in wireless sensor networks. Massive
sensor data is semantically processed and only the infonnation
that is relevant is sent to the user. Event processing runs on
wireless sensor networks with streaming data, keeping in
consideration the hardware constraints and the nature of data.
The primary objective of event detection is to create
perceptions by processing and mining physical world data
captured by the using sensors and adapting background
knowledge to relate it to possible events. An event can be a
simple (or atomic) or a composite event [3]. The events such
as temperature> 90 or light> 50 come under simple events.
Events like explosion detection which is a combination of two
978-1-5090-0148-4/15/$31.00© 2015 IEEE
_
or more simple events come under composite event. These
events are detected by taking readings from multiple sensors
present on the sensor node. Simple events require only
participation of a single sensor (say, light sensor) and
composite events require two or more sensors for their
detection.
The areas in which WSN has been applied have grown a
lot in recent years. There are various real-life applications
where they are used such as environment monitoring, habitat
monitoring, health and medical monitoring, target tracking,
surveillance monitoring [4]. Due to global wanning, the
climatic conditions have changed. As a result, there are more
chances of occurrence of fire. Fire is a disastrous activity
which may cause danger to living beings. Occurrence of fire
may be due to climatic changes or due to human negligence.
WSN helps a lot in detection of these activities with high
accuracy. Alann should be generated if fire has been detected
by the sensors [5]. Therefore, research on detection of fires
with high accuracy and reliability becomes most important.
Traditional algorithms for pattern matching have been
adapted by embedded devices, which apply these algorithms
in distributed sampling of sensor nodes and optimize the
detection accuracy [6]. In this, data is gathered from many
multifunctional sensors after which they are matched with
previous data. Mapping of patterns of an event is significant
for detection of events in WSN.
Detection accuracy can be improved by using machine
learning techniques. Machine learning is an effective approach
to study the correlation that exists between the output and the
input features considered. There are four steps for machine
learning procedure. 1) Feature selection and output labeling,
2) Sample collection 3) Offline training and 4) Online
classification [7].
Feature selection is the method in which most significant
parameter is chosen, which will help to describe the problem
easily. The parameters are chosen in such a way that
maximum variability in the model is explained by them.
Outputs are classified according to the knowledge of experts
in output labeling method. Second is the sample collection in
which data is gathered for training and a back end system is
kept as a database for collection of data. It is also called
centralized learning. However, in many real-life scenarios this
is not applicable. So decentralized or distributed learning is
preferred. Third step is offline training in which classification
is done between two or more solutions and they do not have
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 2015 Third International Conference on Image Infonnation Processing
resource constraints. Lastly, the online classification is
different from offline because offline is done by keeping a
backend server but in online only learning overhead is
considered. In few applications of WSN, learning overhead is
there in training phase. So, it is more efficient and distributed
which reduces communication overhead [8].
Machine learning techniques are: Support Vector
Machines (SVM), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN),
Decision Trees (DT), Regression (REG), and Clustering [9].
In this paper, various machine learning techniques for fire
detection have been discussed. The proposed approach
explains how regression can be used to classify the data
similar to SVM .Comparative analysis is being presented at
the end. The remainder of this paper is described as follows. In
second section we will discuss about various machine learning
techniques for detection of fires. In third section proposed
algorithm will be discussed. In fourth section experimental
setup and comparative analysis has been discussed.
II. RELATED WORK
A. Event Detection/or/orestfires using Support Vector
Machines
There are various technologies and methods by which we
can detect events in WSN. For detections of events like fire
threshold should be defined and specific parameters lik�
temperature, relative humidity should be predefined. If the
threshold value and the sensor readings are not equal; alarm is
generated. The approach mentioned works in two different
phases that is the base phase and Meta phase [10]. Ensemble
learning is implemented at all the cluster heads which are used
to collect and store the infonnation that they acquire from the
respective cluster. The decision making and learning
techniques are applied in the Meta phase .The base station
receives all the infonnation from the cluster head here the
processing of infonnation is perfonned. The processing
involves checking data with the statistical record of previously
collected data. SVM which is a supervised machine learning
technique is applied at the base station with polynomial kernel
function. The sensors which are deployed can sense carbon
dioxide, temperature, humidity and carbon monoxide. The
data in tabular fonn or clustered data is generated by
clustream. The SVM is applied after this to detect fire [II].
B. Circle-based Approximation to Forest Fires with
Distributed Wireless Sensor Networks using clustering
A disaster management system deals with situations in
which various sensors are deployed in a distributed network in
which data is collected from different sources. The main
objective is to make decisions about the occurrence of events.
In previous work the focus was on forest fires and EIDOS
(Equipment Destined/or Orientation and Safety) [12], system.
Its main goal was to decrease the risk of occurrence of fires
and increasing the detection accuracy. A large sensor network
was used in affected area of forest fires which contributed a lot
in gathering the infonnation by the fire-fighters to increase the
safety [l3]. The aim of data gathered by the sensor nodes was
to attain the location and position of fire fronts which were
active at that time. The working of EIDOS system can be
explained as follows. Firstly the multifunctional sensors are
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deployed in an environment. The fire- fighters carry devices
such as smart phones which help to check the outcomes of the
distributed algorithms implemented in sensor networks. The
mobile sensors were able to display the fire map in fonn of
Graphical user interface. In this the system was working
correctly with the connectivity with the central node. Further,
the topology of the nodes was irregular and unknown. One of
the tasks was to detect the geographical position of every
node. This was obtained by localization process. In this
technique, the localization process was range free and
connectivity infonnation was used by sensor nodes to estimate
their position. Assumption was that the parameters sensed
must be within a range and threshold values were predefined.
So, area bumt at a particular temperature ab, such that ab> td,
where !ct is the position after burning. To reduce the energy
consumption, WSN nodes do not maintain any hierarchy and
they do not have any predefined infonnation. Within these
limitations, EIDOS was implemented. Each node maintains
and builds a local approximate value starting from the
detection till occurrence of the fue [14].
C. Data Mining Approach to Predict Forest Fires using
Meteorological Data.
This describes a novel data mining forest fire methodology
in which real time and meteorological data was used. The real
time data gathered from northeast region of Portugal was used
which help to predict bumt area of forest fires [15]. There are
various models with advantages and capabilities which have
been used in regression task. Most easy and classical approach
is the Multiple Regression (MR) model. Only linear mapping
is learnt by it. Thus, to solve this disadvantage, nonlinear
functions like neural networks and support vector machines
should be used. Tree structures like decision trees and random
forest can also be used but these are difficult to implement
with large data. This approach considers four parameters like
rain, wind, temperature and relative humidity. It predicts the
burnt area of fires in which majority of occurrences of fire
were there. This help to make decisions regarding fire
occurrences. A data set of regression consist of hE \!' ...,K}
h
examples. Each maps an input vector (al ......ak) to a
A
predefined target bh. The error is given by: eh � - � , where =
bh denotes the predicted value for the h input pattern. The
perfonnance of the overall task is calculated by a metric which
is global and called as Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) and
Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE).
II:
.
1
MAD = k* I Ibi- hi'l
i=l
k
RMSE = I hi - b;-f'jk
t=l
Lower the values of these better will be results. But RMSE
is more prone to high errors. We can also compare the
regression models by REC curve i.e. Regression Error
Characteristic curve which gives the relation of error tolerance
and predicted percentage of points of burnt area [15].
 2015 Third International Conference on Image Infonnation Processing
D. Event Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks for Disaster
Management
A decision tree is a tree in which inputs are either discrete
or continuous values. In two steps the decision tree is
constructed. First is the training phase and other is the testing
phase [16]. In real time data both the values are different. In
training phase the data is sent or input. If the depth of tree is
found to be very less the time complexity is considered less.
Also, the space occupied by the memory for inputs and
outputs is also reduced.
All the readings of the sensor data are aggragated and
gathered. These readings are then sent to the base station
which works like a voter by using technique called reputation
based voting. Reputation of all the nodes is resposible for
concluding that which node has detected the event or which is
more closer to the actual readings already stored. The node
whose repuation value is greater as compared to others is
choosen. The procedure for choosing node with largest value
is as follows. Assumption is made that all the data collected by
sensors and all the events occurred are correct. Then the
readings are passed from one node to another. The nodes can
pass its reading only to its nearby nodes within a specific
range. The communication between nodes within a given area
taken place and that communication leads to highest value
selection. Further, the changes between the values are checked
i.e. the diiference between the value of the particualr node and
other nearby nodes. Then those are compared with the
predefined threshold values. Yes vote is given by the voter is
the reading choosen is less than the predefined threshold value
and viceversa. Then the readings are stored in table called
NDVT table. Then the highest reputation node is choosen by
two reputation techniques. In first technique, evaluation of
every reading of the sensors is done. Then the comparison
between the sensor node value and nearby nodes values is
done [18]. Calculation of mean of all values is done and to the
result the reputation value of each sensor node is multiplied.
This is taken in fonn of weight. In second technique, Two
predefined threshold values are taken as th l and th2 and
assignment of these values is done manually. Then the
comparison of the reputation value and these threshold values
has done. Decision can be considered perfect if Vn >= th1.
The decision can be considered Ok if thl > Vo > th2 and poor
if Vn < th2 [17].
III. PROPOSED APPROACH
A. Algorithm
A dataset based on collection of parameters acquired from
sensor having n instances for which the accuracy has to be
maximized.
MAXIMUM_SENSOR_ACCURACY (Level)
I) Initially all instances and attributes in the model.
2) Give appropriated level to class attribute according to
'Level' given
3) Where Maxleveli is maximum value in that level i.
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4) Select the attributes that yield the highest
Significance/show highest variability.
5) Divide dataset based on months(eg fire could be likely on
unlikely in a specific month)
6) Make regression equation based on attributes selected in
step3 for each month.
7) Predict the level of fire and raise alann based on the level
of fire.
Output: A highly accurate and robust method of detecting
fire.
The algorithm proposed was run on forest fire dataset to
obtain a [mal model that would have the minimum mean
square error and yield the maximum accuracy explaining the
maximum variability in the model which would increase the
predictive power.
l)Attribute selection based on the proposed approach
All the attributes that were used for prediction in this
model are considered to be significant and predictor attributes
except the one which defines the level of the fire which is a
class attribute. This is done because when stepwise regression
and forward regression were used to select the best predictors
for the model, it showed that all the attributes were significant.
The comparison has been done using all these attributes for all
the models.
2)Division and better prediction
The algorithm divides the datasets based on the months (in
some other application it could also be some other categorical
predictor).This is done because the observations in a particular
month would be similar in a particular way such as it would be
more probable to have large fires in may than in the month of
august. Thus, there will be certain levels common in a
particular month. This helps in easy and fast prediction as one
can estimate the value even without running algorithm for that
particular value.
3)Regression technique for forestfire
Regression is a technique used to study the relationship
between a dependent attribute such as level of fire which
depends on attributes such as humidity, rain etc. We derive an
equation that tells us the value of the level of fire.
The Regression equation is
where � is coefficient and X is predictor.
We can get a more precise and accurate value when we
increase the number of levels .these levels help to assign
whether there is danger or not. This approach can be extended
to other applications also in the field of wireless sensor
networks.
 2015 Third International Conference on Image Infonnation Processing

Table 1: Comparison of machine learning techniques maximum variability in the model as it has the highest R
squared value.
Machine R-square RMSE Analysis
In Fig 2, we can see that the proposed approach has least
Learning
Time RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) which shows that the
Technique
proposed approach is more accurate than other machine
DECISION TREE 16.40% 0.204558 00: 00:19 learning approaches. Also, from the figure 1 it can be seen
LINEAR 2.30% 0.221132 00: 00:17 that the analysis time of the proposed approach is less as
REGRESSION compared to other techniques.
GRNN 0.92% 0.222693 00: 06: 45
Thus, the proposed approach is more accurate because the R­
SYM .003% .2237171 29: 44: 49 squared value of the proposed approach is very large as
PROPOSED 69.21% 0.079785 00: 00:12 compared to other machine learning techniques.
APPROACH R-Squared value is in increasing order as SVM < GRNN <
Linear Regression < Decision tree < Proposed Approach.
4)Predictor variation in the model
Sometimes, measurement of a particular parameter becomes
highly complex. In the proposed model, we can reduce the
number of the attributes and yield an r-squared that explain the
model approximately same. Thus, we can build a regression
equation by the use of those attributes and predict the level of
the fire.

The Regression equation is

Level 0.945 + 0.000131 DMC - 0.000027 DC - 0.00133
=

DC - 0.00133 lSI + 0.00391 temp + 0.00522 wind -

0.0109 rain - 0.00013 FFMC

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

A. Data Collection
The dataset used in the paper has been obtained from the VCI
repository which has datasets and data generators of various fields
which can be used for perfonning machine learning techniques.
The following is the dataset that have been used in this paper:­
Forest Fire Data Set: This multivariate dataset has real type of Fig 1: R-squared values comparison
attributes has 517 samples and 13 features, aims to predict burnt
area [15]. There are 11 predictors in this dataset used for
prediction of forest fires.
In this we have calculated R-squared as RMSE
0.25
R
2 _5--::5_
E---:­
0.2
=

n-k-l
0.15

Table 1 shows the comparison between the simple linear 0.1

regression, decision tree, general regression neural network
0.05
and support vector machine on the basis of root mean square
error. It can be observed from the figure that the proposed o -RMSE
algorithm builds a model that always has least Root Mean
Square Error and has ease in prediction of fire as it defines
some particular level that can be a final concept class for a
particular month. Thus, if only the month is given we can tell
the fire levels that are common without even running the
algorithm for that particular observation using the value
obtained by algorithm for previous values.

From Fig 1, we can see that its R-squared is also high. It can
also be observed that the proposed approach shows the Fig 2: Graph of perfonnance analysis

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 2015 Third International Conference on Image Infonnation Processing

The time complexity of the proposed algorithm comes out to
be O(n). Thus, this approach follows linear complexity.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, an algorithm for detection of fire has been
proposed by using regression and dividing the datasets
according to months. The algorithm achieves low root mean
square error and high R-squared. The beauty of the algorithm
lies in the way that it can give the result without doing the
computation on whole dataset. In future, this approach can be
extended by for other disasters as well. Application of certain
transfonnation might also improve the model efficiency.
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