Downwind Fire and Smoke Detection during a Controlled Burn—Analyzing the Feasibility and Robustness of Several Downwind Wildfire Sensing Modalities through Real World Applications
Name
fire-06-00356.pdf
Size
5.95 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
463865e40818d4f7f94bdaa6e53f2a71
Author(s)
Chwalek, Patrick
Chen, Hall
Dutta, Prabal
Dimon, Joshua
Singh, Sukh
Chiang, Constance
Azwell, Thomas
Date Issued
September 12, 2023
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Fire 6 (9): 356 (2023)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Wildfires have played an increasing role in wreaking havoc on communities, livelihoods, and ecosystems globally, often starting in remote regions and rapidly spreading into inhabited areas where they become difficult to suppress due to their size and unpredictability. In sparsely populated remote regions where freshly ignited fires can propagate unimpeded, the need for distributed fire detection capabilities has become increasingly urgent. In this work, we evaluate the potential of a multitude of different sensing modalities for integration into a distributed downwind fire detection system, something which does not exist today. We deployed custom sensor-rich data logging units over a multi-day-controlled burn event hosted by the Marin County Fire Department in Marin County, CA. Under the experimental conditions, nearly all sensing modalities exhibited signature behaviors of a nearby active fire, but with varying degrees of sensitivity. We present promising preliminary findings from these field tests but also note that future work is needed to assess more prosaic concerns. Larger scale trials will be needed to determine the practicality of specific sensing modalities in outdoor settings, and additional environmental data and testing will be needed to determine the sensor system lifetime, data delivery performance, and other technical considerations. Crucially, this work provides the preliminary justification underscoring that future work is potentially valuable and worth pursuit.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6090356
