Video-Based FLame Detection for the Protection of Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The majority of cultural heritage and archaeological sites, especially in the Mediterranean region, are covered with vegetation, which increases the risk of fires. These fires may also break out and spread towards nearby forests and other wooded land, or conversely start in nearby forests and spread to archaeological sites. Beyond taking precautionary measures to avoid a forest fire, early warning and immediate response to a fire breakout are the only ways to avoid great losses and environmental and cultural heritage damages. The use of terrestrial systems, typically based on video cameras, is currently the most promising solution for advanced automatic wildfire surveillance and monitoring due to its low cost and short response time. Early and accurate detection and localization of flame is an essential requirement of these systems, however, it remains a challenging issue due to the fact that many natural objects have similar characteristics with fire. This paper presents and compares three video-based flame detection techniques, which were developed within the FIRESENSE EU research project, taking into account the chaotic and complex nature of the fire phenomenon and the large variations of flame appearance in video. Experimental results show that the proposed methods provide high fire detection rates with reasonable false alarm ratios.