Thermal Mapping and Air Quality Sensor Modules for Wildfire Suppression

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Pedro Alexandre Pereira da
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/155745
• topic: Wildfire Prevention; Infrared Thermal Sensor; CO Sensor; Oxygen Sensor; GNSS Receiver; Arduino; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

With the increased effects of climate change, extreme weather is becoming increasingly frequent. Seasons of low humidity and elevated temperatures, in conjunction with growing encroachment of urban populations upon rural and forest areas, have increased both the fre-quency and severity of wildfires. When a wildfire occurs, massive amounts of equipment and personnel are deployed to combat it on the front lines, putting firefighters in dangerous, po-tentially fatal, situations where they deal with flames and reduced air quality, due to low oxygen and toxic gases. Even after the fires are mostly put out there is still the risk of reignition due to leftover embers, which if left unattended or unnoticed can cripple the firefighting efforts due to new fronts being created. In order to assist with these issues, two compact sensor modules for vehicle application were created. The first module is the Thermal Mapping consists of a fire detection system using a multipixel infrared sensor linked to a small screen to provide real-time thermal imaging and enabling a user to better detect hotspots and hidden flames even at large distances. The sec-ond module is the Alarm Module, which is installed in a vehicle and monitors the oxygen levels as well as its position via GPS and transmits them both to the user through Bluetooth; this ensures that when conditions grow too dangerous the responders are alerted immediately in order to retreat and that rescuers can find them easily if needed.