Smart CCTV detects brush-fire in early stage
Researchers develop a CCTV that can detect the first flames of a brush fire; a specially developed software for the CCTV analyzes video images for the characteristic flicker and color of a flame; the software looks for pixels which change from one frame to the next, and which also have a fire-like color
An automatic early warning system that can detect the first flames of a bush fire has been developed by modifying an ordinary CCTV surveillance system. New Scientist reports that the bush-fire alarm, devised by fire-safety engineer Yaping He of the University of Western Sydney in Australia and colleagues, uses specially developed software to analyze video images for the characteristic flicker and color of a flame. The software looks for pixels which change from one frame to the next, and which also have a fire-like color. “If it’s not flickering then it is not a flame,” He says.
The team reports that it has successfully applied this method to video clips of scenes with various lighting and backgrounds. Early detection can prevent a fire taking hold and doing serious damage, but conventional detectors, which pick up heat or soot particles, struggle in the breezy outdoors, while infrared cameras are expensive, He says.
The system has promise, says Grant Wigley of the University of South Australia in Adelaide, who was not involved in the work. He suggests, though, that it would need further development to work with smoky fires, where the flames may be masked.
-read more in Juan Chen et al., “Multi-feature fusion based fast video flame detection,” Building and Environment 45, no. 5 (May 2010): 1113-22
