FireFly Project: UAV Development for Distributed Sensing of Forest Fires

Forest fires pose significant threats to ecosystems and communities globally. This paper explores the development of an automated system for forest fire monitoring and prevention, particularly focusing on regions around Northern Thailand. Despite recent applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for fire detection, existing technologies face challenges in detecting early onset of fires in dense forests due to limited resolution and sensitivity of thermal cameras. To address this, this paper proposes a novel approach combining UAV-based surveying with ground-based Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to enable early detection of forest fires, even when obscured by tree canopies. The low-cost IoT sensors measure temperature, humidity and air quality at forest ground level. To overcome limitations in 4G communication for the IoT sensors, our system leverages UAVs as communication hubs to collect data from IoT sensors and survey the area for smoke and fire. The proposed system, part of the FireFly Project in collaboration with Chiang Mai University and the University of Glasgow, aims to overcome limitations of existing technologies and provide effective forest fire monitoring and prevention solutions. Experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate the performance of the distributed UAV-IoT system in detecting and communicating potential forest fires, paving the way for enhanced wildfire management strategies in fire-prone areas.