Trial of Bushfire-detection Technology
The trial of bush fire detection cameras commenced on 15 February in the Otway Ranges in Victoria and near Tumut in New South Wales and will run until the end of April, with a possible one month extension depending on prevailing conditions.
The cameras are able to continually monitor bushland and automatically detect smoke and lightning to enable the provision of exact information on where and when a fire starts. This will potentially assist fire fighters get to a fire in the shortest possible time in order to prevent it becoming an inferno.
The trial will be conducted in two parts, with locations chosen to provide broad area coverage and the opportunity for controlled testing where appropriate. Cameras for the trial will be provided by three private contractors: Firewatch, Eyefi and Forestwatch.
In Victoria, twelve cameras will be trialled at four locations covering the Otway Ranges at Mt Porndon, Crowes Lookout, Peters Hill and Mt Cowley under ‘real conditions’ without the use of controlled burning.
In New South Wales, three cameras will be trialled at Mt Tumorrama in the Tumut region under ‘controlled conditions’ which will include test burning to evaluate the performance of the system under simulated conditions.
The Australian Government will fund the trial, estimated to cost $3 million, with coordination and facilitation provided by the Victorian and New South Wales Governments.
The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) will evaluate the trial by comparing the effectiveness of different camera systems and examining their ability to accurately detect fires, avoid false detections, and their potential to be integrated into existing emergency management processes, including for example, providing timely warnings to the community.
Forest Watch
The ForestWatch, early detection system is being trialed in the Otway Ranges in Victoria and near Tumut in New South Wales as part of the Federal Government’s estimated $3 million initiative to test the bushfire early detection technology.
The trial, which started on 15 February 2010, is hosted by DSE in Victoria and Forests NSW, is investigating the significant benefits of employing bushfire early detection technology that can detect a fire within just 6 minutes of it starting.
ForestWatch is a computerized, semi-automatic system that alerts fire personnel of the exact location of a fire and sends real-time imagery of the fire to the local fire chief giving him an opportunity to respond to a fire before it spreads and threatens communities.
The ForestWatch system was developed 8 years ago by a South African company, EVS Systems Pty Ltd. Since then it has been commercially deployed in forests in USA, Canada, South Africa, Swaziland, Chile and Slovakia. Fire Fighting Technologies distribute the ForestWatch system in Australia.
ForestWatch in an open system that uses COTS (commercially off-the-shelf) cameras backed by “smarts” to detect smoke signature at day and fire glow at night. When atmospheric conditions are optimal, it can detect a 0.1Ha fire at 50km. 6 minutes is the time it takes the unit to complete a 360º rotation for a 16km detection range.
A key differentiating factor is that triangulation is not needed to accurately determine fire location. A Digital Terrain Model of the land under the coverage of each camera is loaded. Each pixel of a camera’s field of view is associated with a ground location. Then you are only a click away from the fire location (longitude, latitude, bearing, distance).
The system can work day and night and can be powered by a solar panel to be completely autonomous from an external power supply.
FireWatch
The FireWatch bushfire-detection system and the underlying communications network in the designated trial areas of the Otway Ranges in Victoria and Tumut, NSW.
Each of the two FireWatch bushfire-detection trial networks comprises a number of sophisticated sensors with secure communications connectivity to regional, manned control centres. The FireWatch network is installed at four Victorian sites in the Otway Ranges and two NSW sites in the Tumut area. The FireWatch Control Centre is located in Burwood, Victoria with subsidiary systems in Colac, Victoria, and Tumut in NSW.
Founded on aerospace technology developed for NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission, the FireWatch system incorporates an optical sensor, which boasts enhanced spectral sensitivity with near-infrared (NIR)-sensing capabilities. This permits detection across a wide range of visible light wavelength (480 to 1200nm) day or night—far superior to that of the human eye (400 to 750nm). Furthermore, the sensor’s extremely high grey-scale resolution enables it to distinguish between over 16,000 shades of grey—critical functionality for detecting first signs of smoke and differentiating between smoke, cloud and dust.
In operation, each FireWatch camera rotates through 360 degrees every 4-8 minutes, detecting smoke at distances of up to 40km. Once smoke or fire is detected an alarm with a corresponding image is transmitted to the relevant control room via the Airwave-built communications network. Here, the image is rapidly assessed and the resultant information disseminated to the fire agencies, allowing them to commence their fire suppression activities.
FireWatch has been operating in Germany for eight years and has lead to a reduction in area burned by over 90 per cent.
Contact:
Phone:
