1. INTRODUCTION
In this day and age, natural calamities come on the spur of
the moment and leave a tremendous loss on mankind,
property, flora, and fauna. The catastrophe may be an
avalanche, tsunami, cyclone, or drought. One such
devastation is forest fires, also called wildfires, wildland
fires, rural fires, or bush fires. They are responsible for 32%
of global CO, 10% of methane emissions, and over 86% of
soot emissions every year. It’s due to the release of immense
quantities of carbon stored in tree populations and soils by
the fires. But they play a vital role in maintaining the plant
and life as sunshine and rain for over 46% of ecoregions on
earth [1]. They may not be a matter of consideration until
the forest fires become more minacious and eat up the
forests and species. Forest fires, if not identified and
controlled initially, would leave a remarkable scar. An area
of 700,000 to 1 million hectors in the Mediterranean region
gets slain by these fires every year. Reports say that nearly
906 thousand hectors, 2.3 million animals of Amazon habitat
were burned down during Amazon wildfires in 2019.
Australian government declared a state of emergency in
November 2019 due to the record-breaking bushfires that
did away with nearly 1.25 billion animals.
Stats say forest fires occur mainly due to human negligence
or arson. Lightning is responsible only for 7% of the fires.
Henceforth, whatever the cause may be, the late detection of
catastrophe threatens our very own existence. Thanks to
modern solutions, science served us with the Internet of
things. In a sentence, the internet of things is the concept of
connecting any device to the internet and other connected
devices [2]. In this situation, describing “The rule of 30”
really makes a lot of sense [3]. It says the 3 important factors
that conduct forest fires: temperatures below 30°C, humidity
mark below 30%, and wind speed value above 30kmph in
the same area. Proper usage of the data can assist in the
identification of areas which has a high probability to catch
fires and in sequence to utilize the setup to detect the fires
and prevent loss.
In this experimentation, we have tried to make use of
atmospheric pressure, humidity, and physical parameters:
fire and smoke to detect the calamity. The measure of
hazardous CO gases that are usually omitted during wood
burn is really important in air quality management. The
setup consisted of sensors and actuators assisted by IoT is
developed to detect the fire, alert the forest agencies as well
as to indicate the location and intensity to them.
2. PROPOSED SYSTEM:
A wireless system employed with sensors and transmitters
that works for collecting information, transmitting it to the
ad-hoc style offices and indicate the intensity of forest fires to
the forest safety management is developed(fig – 1)
Geographical and climatic conditions of that area taken from
records help us predict the forest fire situation in the very
first line. But that prediction serves as a blind reference.
However, the sensors employed would detect even normal
weather conditions. So, based on the record data, critical
points can be fed to the microcontroller so that they indicate
an emergency only if the parameters cross safety values. The
proposed system based on IoT consists of mainly the
following components: Sensors, microcontroller, 4G module,
transmitters. Sensors and microcontroller than can be best
employed in this system are proposed below. These are so far
the best that can be used from that of available from the
market.
2.5 Microcontroller:
Arduino Uno (fig -6) can be used as it is cheap, very much
available, and best at functioning. It is based on the ATMEGA
328P microcontroller. It is easy to connect to any computer
with a USB cable or power it with an AC-to-DC adapter or
battery to get started. It can operate with very little voltage
of 5V. It also has a flash memory of 32kb which is very high
enough for this project.
3. WORKING OF THE SYSTEM:
The sensors should be pre-arranged with individual power
supplies and their battery status should be indicated through
a mobile application to assess it in real-time. Sensor assisted
systems should be set out at distant locations in the forest
where the inspection can be done covering the whole arena.
The whole architecture of the IoT enabled system is
presented as a block diagram (fig – 7).Here the rule of 30, as
mentioned earlier plays a significant role. The sensors will
be fed with the instruction to notify only if the parameters
there cross the preset values.
Fig – 7: Architecture of the proposed IoT system
Arduino which contains ATMEGA 328P microcontroller
collects the data, processes it, and transmits it through the
transmitter. There are a lot of transmitters available in the
market which are compatible with Arduino Uno and can
transmit the signals for long ranges. Once all the required
data is collected, it is sent to the transmitter that transmits
data to a certain range to reach the forest safety monitoring
station. The receiver collects the data from the transmitter.
Then the receiver sends the data to the controller IC of the
attached Arduino Uno embedded in the receiver circuit in
digital form making the controller possible to do the
programmed actions for monitoring the parameters. The
receiver circuit’s Arduino is programmed with a lot of library
functions for the ethernet shield interfacing. This allows us
to create a webpage in a locally created network. It can be
named as a Fire detection system using a router. Arduino
Uno is connected to the internet with the help of the ethernet
that is already connected to the microcontroller. Ethernet
shield R3 can be used. It is based on the Wiznet W5100
ethernet chip. It provides a network (IP) slack capable of
both TCP and UDP [8]. It supports up to four simultaneous
socket connections. The ethernet controller used is W5100
with an internal 32K buffer with connection speed
10/100Mb.
The data now can be either displayed using an LCD
connecting to Arduino Uno. Another option that can be
employed for digital display is through a mobile application.
A mobile application can be developed so that it receives
data from the cloud data. Since the microcontroller and
ethernet module is present there itself in the monitoring
office, ethernet can be used. Wi-fi can also be installed
instead of the ethernet module if the requirement is fully
wireless.
4. CONCLUSION:
The impact and aftermath of the wildfires are discussed at
the beginning of the writing which drew the attention
towards the importance of early detection of the forest fires.
A wireless system assisted by different types of modules and
microcontrollers is proposed. The best type of components
was discussed along with their specifications so that when a
new version of sensors comes into the market, these would
serve as a reference to help which specifications should be
considered while replacing the old ones. The working
procedure of the whole system was explained starting from
the sensor functioning to indication to authorities. The
system proposed was a continuous real-time system. So, the
indications can be observed only if the parameters of the
situation crosses preset values. A lot of research scope is also
mentioned below to amend this idea
COMMENTS