Advancing Forest Fire Risk Evaluation: An Integrated Framework for Visualizing Area-Specific Forest Fire Risks Using UAV Imagery, Object Detection and Color Mapping Techniques

Abstract

Forest fires have significant implications for the Earth’s ecological balance, causing widespread devastation and posing formidable challenges for containment once they propagate. The development of computer vision methods holds promise in facilitating the timely identification of forest fire risks, thereby preventing potential economic losses. In our study conducted in various regions in British Columbia, we utilized image data captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and computer vision methods to detect various types of trees, including alive trees, debris (logs on the ground), beetle- and fire-impacted trees, and dead trees that pose a risk of a forest fire. We then designed and implemented a novel sliding window technique to process large forest areas as georeferenced orthogonal maps. The model demonstrates proficiency in identifying various tree types, excelling in detecting healthy trees with precision and recall scores of 0.904 and 0.848, respectively. Its effectiveness in recognizing trees killed by beetles is somewhat limited, likely due to the smaller number of examples available in the dataset. After the tree types are detected, we generate color maps, indicating different fire risks to provide a new tool for fire managers to assess and implement prevention strategies. This study stands out for its integration of UAV technology and computer vision in forest fire risk assessment, marking a significant step forward in ecological protection and sustainable forest management.