Forest Fire Sensing and Decision Support using Large Scale WSNs

An undeniable and urgent need for environmental protection and preservation has been raised in the last few years. Undoubtedly, great environmental damage has occurred lately which has resulted in the deterioration of the human quality of life. Hardly does a year go by, without the occurrence of extreme environmental damages, especially in forests due to wild fire expansion. Forests have been wiped out of the map, because of inevitable fire incidents which incinerate every fauna and flora and even human lives in their path. In this paper we suggest an application platform for developing a Fire Sensing Management System based on WSNs and further discuss decision support that can be based on such a platform and application software. The use of such a system can assist the appropriate authorities detect a forest fire incident in the very beginning and assess the relative severity of simultaneous forest fire incidents in order to decide how to best exploit availabe resources. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play a fundamental role in the implementation, being the in-situ detection mechanism. The Management and Decision Support System does the collection of network data, the depiction of temperature values on platforms such as Google maps, and the assessment of the relative severity of simultaneous fire fronts using forest fire simulation. It can also send real-time alarm messages, so that immediate action is undertaken by the crisis management authorities.