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Fire
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Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management
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Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management

A special issue of Fire (ISSN 2571-6255). This special issue belongs to the section "Fire Science Models, Remote Sensing, and Data".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2024 | Viewed by 8882

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ágoston Restás

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Disaster Management, University of Public Service, H-1083 Budapest, Hungary
Interests: disaster management; firefighting; fighting forest fires; drone applications; decision-making in emergencies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Drone applications have recently become the most dynamically developing branch of the aviation industry, and drones can now perform tasks that previously seemed unimaginable. Moreover, their swarm technology promises new opportunities in the future. Developers endow drones with newer and newer capabilities, and as a result they are becoming increasingly active players in our everyday lives. Fire protection is one of the most important elements of our safe environment, so for both professionals and scientists the question arises as to whether drones can be used in this application at all, and if so, how to increase fire safety. The articles in the Special Issue will investigate how drones can play an effective role in increasing fire safety. This includes examining the possibility of using drones for urban fires, industrial fires, traffic fires, and, especially, forest fires.

We are looking for answers to questions in case of forest fire such as

  • When drones can be effectively used to detect hot spots as soon as possible;
  • How it can help firefighters in reconnaissance before starting the intervention;
  • How drones can help fire commanders in managing intervention and post-fire monitoring;
  • How drones can be effective in generating prescribed fires or even back fires;
  • How drones can be effective in suppressing forest fires.

In the same way, we are looking for the answer to how drones can play a role in extinguishing urban fires, traffic fires and industrial fires, and, moreover, what possibilities there are in their swarm technology. In addition to the possibilities of using drones, we are also looking for answers to the problems of the legal environment, technical requirements, and the economic barriers to their effective use in fire applications.

Prof. Dr. Ágoston Restás
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • drone applications
  • forest fire
  • urban fire
  • fire detection
  • fire reconnaissance
  • fire monitoring
  • post-fire monitoring
  • prescribed fire
  • fire suppression
  • effectiveness and efficiency

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 5451 KiB  
Article
Path Planning of Multiple UAVs for the Early Detection of Wildfires in the National Park of Kotychi and Strofylia Wetlands
by Georgia Kritikou, Panteleimon Xofis, Konstantinos Souflas and Vassilis Moulianitis
Fire 2024, 7(12), 444; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7120444 - 29 Nov 2024
Viewed by 454
Abstract
The surveillance of the National Park Kotychi and Strofylia Wetlands in southwest Greece with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is studied in this work. As comprehensive coverage of the region cannot be attained with just stationary ground cameras, multiple parallel moving UAVs are utilized. [...] Read more.
The surveillance of the National Park Kotychi and Strofylia Wetlands in southwest Greece with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is studied in this work. As comprehensive coverage of the region cannot be attained with just stationary ground cameras, multiple parallel moving UAVs are utilized. The region is divided into squares, which are further subdivided into regular grids with nodes whose weights are calculated based on the fire risk of the corresponding region. Heuristic methods are proposed for selecting the UAVs’ start and goal graph nodes. The graph with the start and goal nodes serves as input to the A* algorithm, which computes offline short paths that direct the UAVs to cross areas with the highest fire risk. The number of UAVs is progressively increased as the coverage of the previous detections proves insufficient. The authors determine the number of UAVs needed for each section of the divided area. They also demonstrate that the UAVs can scan simultaneously without collisions, as each UAV follows a unique path inaccessible to the others. Finally, the presented computations and results show that the proposed method can effectively contribute to fire scanning in the area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management)
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28 pages, 25203 KiB  
Article
Integrating Physical-Based Models and Structure-from-Motion Photogrammetry to Retrieve Fire Severity by Ecosystem Strata from Very High Resolution UAV Imagery
by José Manuel Fernández-Guisuraga, Leonor Calvo, Luis Alfonso Pérez-Rodríguez and Susana Suárez-Seoane
Fire 2024, 7(9), 304; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7090304 - 27 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1020
Abstract
We propose a novel mono-temporal framework with a physical basis and ecological consistency to retrieve fire severity at very high spatial resolution. First, we sampled the Composite Burn Index (CBI) in 108 field plots that were subsequently surveyed through unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) [...] Read more.
We propose a novel mono-temporal framework with a physical basis and ecological consistency to retrieve fire severity at very high spatial resolution. First, we sampled the Composite Burn Index (CBI) in 108 field plots that were subsequently surveyed through unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights. Then, we mimicked the field methodology for CBI assessment in the remote sensing framework. CBI strata were identified through individual tree segmentation and geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA). In each stratum, wildfire ecological effects were estimated through the following methods: (i) the vertical structural complexity of vegetation legacies was computed from 3D-point clouds, as a proxy for biomass consumption; and (ii) the vegetation biophysical variables were retrieved from multispectral data by the inversion of the PROSAIL radiative transfer model, with a direct physical link with the vegetation legacies remaining after canopy scorch and torch. The CBI scores predicted from UAV ecologically related metrics at the strata level featured high fit with respect to the field-measured CBI scores (R2 > 0.81 and RMSE < 0.26). Conversely, the conventional retrieval of fire effects using a battery of UAV structural and spectral predictors (point height distribution metrics and spectral indices) computed at the plot level provided a much worse performance (R2 = 0.677 and RMSE = 0.349). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management)
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20 pages, 4017 KiB  
Article
Probabilistic Path Planning for UAVs in Forest Fire Monitoring: Enhancing Patrol Efficiency through Risk Assessment
by Yuqin Wang, Fengsen Gao and Minghui Li
Fire 2024, 7(7), 254; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7070254 - 17 Jul 2024
Viewed by 1086
Abstract
Forest fire is a significant global natural disaster, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained attention in wildfire prevention for their efficient and flexible monitoring capabilities. Proper UAV patrol path planning can enhance fire-monitoring accuracy and response speed. This paper proposes a probabilistic [...] Read more.
Forest fire is a significant global natural disaster, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained attention in wildfire prevention for their efficient and flexible monitoring capabilities. Proper UAV patrol path planning can enhance fire-monitoring accuracy and response speed. This paper proposes a probabilistic path planning (PPP) module that plans UAV patrol paths by combining real-time fire occurrence probabilities at different points. Initially, a forest fire risk logistic regression model is established to compute the fire probabilities at different patrol points. Subsequently, a patrol point filter is applied to remove points with low fire probabilities. Finally, combining fire probabilities with distances between patrol points, a dynamic programming (DP) algorithm is employed to generate an optimal UAV patrol route. Compared with conventional approaches, the experimental results demonstrate that the PPP module effectively improves the timeliness of fire monitoring and containment, and the introduction of DP, considering that the fire probabilities and the patrol point filter both contribute positively to the experimental outcomes. Different combinations of patrol point coordinates and their fire probabilities are further studied to summarize the applicability of this method, contributing to UAV applications in forest fire monitoring and prevention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management)
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30 pages, 8655 KiB  
Article
Optimizing Drone-Based Surface Models for Prescribed Fire Monitoring
by Christian Mestre-Runge, Marvin Ludwig, Maria Teresa Sebastià, Josefina Plaixats and Agustin Lobo
Fire 2023, 6(11), 419; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6110419 - 2 Nov 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2171
Abstract
Prescribed burning and pyric herbivory play pivotal roles in mitigating wildfire risks, underscoring the imperative of consistent biomass monitoring for assessing fuel load reductions. Drone-derived surface models promise uninterrupted biomass surveillance but require complex photogrammetric processing. In a Mediterranean mountain shrubland burning experiment, [...] Read more.
Prescribed burning and pyric herbivory play pivotal roles in mitigating wildfire risks, underscoring the imperative of consistent biomass monitoring for assessing fuel load reductions. Drone-derived surface models promise uninterrupted biomass surveillance but require complex photogrammetric processing. In a Mediterranean mountain shrubland burning experiment, we refined a Structure from Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereopsis (MVS) workflow to diminish biases in 3D modeling and RGB drone imagery-based surface reconstructions. Given the multitude of SfM-MVS processing alternatives, stringent quality oversight becomes paramount. We executed the following steps: (i) calculated Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) between Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) checkpoints to assess SfM sparse cloud optimization during georeferencing; (ii) evaluated elevation accuracy by comparing the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of six surface and thirty terrain clouds against GNSS readings and known box dimensions; and (iii) complemented a dense cloud quality assessment with density metrics. Balancing overall accuracy and density, we selected surface and terrain cloud versions for high-resolution (2 cm pixel size) and accurate (DSM, MAE = 57 mm; DTM, MAE = 48 mm) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generation. These DEMs, along with exceptional height and volume models (height, MAE = 12 mm; volume, MAE = 909.20 cm3) segmented by reference box true surface area, substantially contribute to burn impact assessment and vegetation monitoring in fire management systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management)
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17 pages, 2342 KiB  
Article
Examining the Effectiveness of Aerial Firefighting with the Components of Firebreak Requirements and Footprint Geometry—Critics of the Present Practice
by Agoston Restas
Fire 2023, 6(9), 351; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6090351 - 8 Sep 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3397
Abstract
The negative impact of climate change is increasingly evident in the severity of forest fires. Fires are becoming more intense and can often only be controlled by aerial means. Aerial firefighting is known as a very effective method—in some cases, it is the [...] Read more.
The negative impact of climate change is increasingly evident in the severity of forest fires. Fires are becoming more intense and can often only be controlled by aerial means. Aerial firefighting is known as a very effective method—in some cases, it is the only option—of suppressing fire, but it is a very expensive solution. Recently, the effectiveness of this method has received a lot of criticism, with some studies showing a loss of between 60 and 95%, so it is worth approaching this issue in a different way. The aim of this study is to estimate losses using a new method that has not been used before. For this purpose, this study focuses on two components: the requirements of the firebreak and the geometry of the footprint. For the first, the rules of thumb of the practice were applied depending on the fireline intensity. One is the required coverage level of the surface with suppressant, and the other is the required wetted bandwidth, which is the firebreak. In practice, the firebreak should be 2–2.5 times wider than the length of the flame. For the footprint geometry, the author used the results of previous studies dealing with footprint formation. At the end, the design of the required firebreak and the simplified design of the footprint, which is an ellipsoid, were compared to each other. The results show that, in the case of a fireline intensity of 3 MWm−1 and a coverage level of 2.4 kgm−2, the loss is approximately 36.4–44.6% for the ellipsoidal footprint alone and 86–87.8% for the total amount of extinguishing agent. The conclusion is that future work should focus not on a more accurate description and understanding of emissions but on developing a technology that can change the shape of the footprint from an elliptical to a rectangular shape. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone Applications Supporting Fire Management)
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