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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 3757

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

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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
Viewed by 1615
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 1 | Viewed by 1761
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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