Detecting the Dangerous Area of Toxic Gases with Wireless Sensor Networks

Petrochemical accidents, e.g., toxic gas leaking and explosion, result in serious damage, so the detection and visualization of the dangerous area of leaking toxic gases is an important research issue for large-scale petrochemical plants. There have been many efforts made to address this issue by using a large number of special monitoring devices. These special devices provide the gas concentration reports within their individual ranges. However, because of the continuity of gas diffusion and the invisibility of toxic gases, it is difficult to detect and visualize the continuous dangerous area of gas diffusion by only using the scattered concentration reports. This paper proposes a scheme to detect and visualize the dangerous area using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this proposed scheme, a planarization algorithm is used to planarize a WSN, and based on the planarized network, the boundary area of gas diffusion is calculated to delimitate the dangerous area. This study also verifies the robustness of the proposed scheme in regards to the node failure. The node failure has a special kind of influence on the accuracy of dangerous area detection. This paper also analyzes the impact of 5 planarization algorithms on the accuracy of dangerous area detection.