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SA developed fire detection system piloted by FERIC

A long-range outdoor fire detection system - developed by a Durban company - is currently being piloted by the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC) after outperforming systems offered by NASA and a German aerospace company.

Envirovision Solutions (EVS) provides advanced vision systems for industrial and environmental monitoring. The company has deployed three systems covering 700 000 km, which is more than half the area covered by the South African Forestry industry. EVS uses multiple cameras that feed live video streams to a central control centre using satellite communications.

The EVS solution was accepted over and above a bid from NASA (National Aeronautical Space Administration) which proposed the use of unmanned aircraft and a system from a German Aerospace company which tendered a camera system that has been used on planet Mars.

"They were too expensive and their technologies did not match the rugged, industrial solution we presented," says Dr Gavin Hough, managing director of EVS.

With a PhD in Physics, Dr Hough spearheaded initial applications of algorithms, which he developed during 14 months in the Antarctic studying the ozone hole and Southern Lights. Together with Dr Alan Gove, a Boston University graduate, followed by experience with the Lincoln lab, MIT, with special skills in image processing, original products in forest fire detection and plume tracking were developed.

Freddie Saayman, an engineer with a forestry background, has strengthened contact with the foresters on the ground, whose support and feedback is critical to the sustained success of the product.

Envirovision's offices are located at the KwaZulu-Natal Innovation Support Centre (ISC) in Durban where it uses the ISC's facilities to further develop and enhance the software for its environmental monitoring systems. The ISC assists innovators - companies or individuals - to take their ideas from 'mind to market' through a network of technical, marketing and investment providers.

The system, which is currently in place in Canada where lightning causes about 60% of the fires, is being monitored throughout spring, summer and early autumn, when fires there are most prevalent.

Multiple PTZ cameras are mounted on 100 m or higher towers, which feed live video back to a control centre. Unlike continuous visual monitoring, Envirovision Solutions quantify change that may be far too slow or subtle for the human eye.

More importantly, limits and alarms can be agreed up front and best practice highlighted as the event occurs. Every picture element or pixel making up the video frame is linked to a location on the ground. This means that all smoke detection events and any operator's mouse-click on the image can be pinpointed on a map.

The reverse is also true - any known position on a map can be projected on the video feed. In this way existing lightning detection and tracking systems can be used to overlay lightning icons on the video so that the operator can zoom in to the position of the strike to see whether or not it has started a fire.

Complex software that removes camera movement caused by strong winds is built into the system.

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