Can the LoRaWAN network protect forests from the fire?

A forest fire is a type of wildfire where an uncontrolled fire rages through vegetation generally more than six feet in height. A wildfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, unwanted, uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation starting in rural areas. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire can also be classified more specifically as a forest fire, brush fire, bushfire (in Australia), desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire. The most common hazard in forests is forests fire. Forests fires are as old as the forests themselves. They pose a threat not only to the forest wealth but also to the entire regime to fauna and flora seriously disturbing the

biodiversity and the ecology and environment of a region. During summer, when there is no rain for months, the forests become littered with dry senescent leaves and twinges, which could burst into flames ignited by the slightest spark. The Himalayan forests, particularly, Garhwal Himalayas have been burning regularly during the last few summers, with colossal loss of vegetation cover of that region.

Cause

Forest fires are caused by Natural causes as well as Man made causes

• Natural causes - Many forest fires start from natural causes such as lightning which set trees on fire. However, rain extinguishes such fires without causing much damage. High atmospheric temperatures and dryness (low humidity) offer favourable circumstance for a fire to start.

• Man made causes - Fire is caused when a source of fire like a naked flame, cigarette or bidi, electric spark or any source of ignition comes into contact with inflammable material.

Facts

• Lightning strikes the earth over 100,000 times a day. 10 to 20% of these lightning strikes can cause fire.

• A fire is part of the natural cycle of many ecosystems.

• About 100 cloud-to-ground lightning bolts touch the Earth every single second, and about 24,600 fires are started by lightning each year.

• Approximately 4 in 5 forest fires are started by humans.

• A “crown fire” is one that burns quickly across the tops of trees.

• 90% of all wildfires are started by humans

• On average, 1.2 billion acres of forest burn in the United States each year.

Solutions

Long Range (LoRa) is a wireless technology in which a low power transmitter forwards small packets of data to a receiver, usually over a long distance. These features make LoRa fall into the category of LPWAN networks. Although LoRa’s coverage range is wide, it is highly dependent on the environment and the building materials that make it up. The range for rural surroundings is approximate up to 10 km. However, in urban surroundings, it is reduced to 5 km. Nonetheless, some tests confirm that data was received from a distance of hundreds of kilometres with adequate and unobstructed direct vision in the Fresnel area between the devices.

The typical architecture of a LoRaWAN network is based on a star topology, in which there is a gateway that forwards messages between an end device (nodes) and a central network server. The network server directs the packets of each device in the network to an application server.

So ,we will sense fire or smoke through sensors or nodes. The main focus is the early smoke detection of wildfires in order to reduce the damaged area to a minimum. Large and high-intensity forest fires are widely uncontrollable and cause very high risk. To reduce false alarms, especially in hardly accessible terrain such as a forest fire in the mountains, a remote-controlled UAV can fly to the place where a fire is assumed to confirm that the origin of the smoke is most likely a fire.

Additional benefits of this network :

• Tracking of forest animal.

• Detection of animal's abnormal behaviour: short distance travelled, death of the animal, animal isolated from the livestock, etc.

• Be alerted if an animal gets out of a geo-fencing (rambling, flight, etc.)

• Tracking of Vehicle: When they enter the forest area, we can install the GPS device on their vehicle to track their movement.

• Legal/illegal human activities in the forest can be tracked.

• Tracking of smuggling activities.