Date of Award

6-2013

Degree Name

MS in Electrical Engineering

Department/Program

Electrical Engineering

Advisor

John Saghri

Abstract

Every year wildfires threaten or destroy ecological habitats, man-made infrastructure and people’s lives. Additionally millions of dollars are spent each year trying to prevent and control these fires. Ideally if a wildfire can be detected before it rages out of control it can be extinguished and avoid large scale devastation. Traditional manned fire lookout towers are neither cost effective nor particularly efficient at detecting wildfire. It is proposed that temporal filtering can be used to isolate the signals created at the beginnings of potential wildfires. Temporal filtering can remove any background image and any periodic signals created by the camera movement. Once typical signals are analyzed, digital filters can be designed to pass fire signals while blocking the unwanted signals. The temporal filter passes only fire signals and signals generated by moving objects. These objects can be distinguished from each other by analyzing the objects mid and long wave energy profile. This algorithm is tested on 17 data sources and its results analyzed.

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