Outside Dynamic Evacuation Routes to Escape a Wildfire: A Prototype App for Forest Firefighters

Abstract

This paper describes a prototype application to use different algorithms for creating optimal evacuation routes in the presence of a wildfire with a dynamic event-based update. The application uses a meteorological API that obtains real-time temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, speed, and wind direction of each location within an area using geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) for creating a sensor network. The data are stored in a database for monitoring and visualization using the open-source platform Grafana, which includes an early warning mechanism that sends messages when it detects a temperature outside the normal range. Three different simulation scenarios were evaluated, varying the fire’s starting point coordinates and the evacuation route. The results show that the algorithm reacts to the presence of fire, maximizing safety margins even on longer evacuation routes. The prototype can be used to create an application to fight forest fires and safeguard rescue agents’ lives.

Optimal Wireless Sensor Networks Allocation for Wooded Areas Using Quantum-Behaved Swarm Optimization Algorithms

“…[20] describes the simulation tool for spreading forest fires, developed using transition rules in cellular automata, considering density and type of vegetation, wind speed and direction, and terrain elevation, among other parameters. On the other hand, [21] describes a prototype for the dynamic creation of evacuation routes in forest fires using a virtual sensor network (VSN) that obtains data on temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and other parameters received from a web weather API. These are set up into a forest fire propagation algorithm with an initial coordinate (latitude, longitude) to start the simulation and predict how the disaster will spread.…”

Analysis of the Threat of Forest Fires to Ancient Cities by GIS and Remote Sensing Methods

“…After the NBR analysis on Band 5 and Band 7 for the dates before and after the fire, dNBR analysis was applied to understand the burn severity of forests between the two dates. In a study of fire escape scenarios, the distances between the fire starting and end points were determined as 861 meters, 935 meters and 1175 meters (Castro-Basurto et al, 2021). Therefore, in this study, escape distances were determined approximately, to observe the fire threat to the Amos ancient city, 500 meters, 1 kilometer, and 2 kilometers buffer zones were applied to the point of the ancient city.…”

Sensor Network Simulator Prototype With Real-Time Environmental Data Monitoring to Build Smart Application

“…Simultaneously, a meteorological API collects real-time data from the nodes' location (latitude, longitude), and a micro-services scheme with a concentrator (gateway) allow external applications to subscribe to the simulated network design to receive the sensors' data. Finally, the sensor network provided by the simulator was previously tested for creating an external application described in [30]; this aims to know the spread of a wildfire while monitoring an area in real-time with the sensor network in the simulator. These features of sending, obtaining, and monitoring data in real-time highlight the simulation platform compared to others.…”