Experience from a Pilot Implementation of an "In-Situ" Forest Temperature Measurement Network

Wireless sensor networks are becoming quite popular and gain ground to a wide range of applications. A new integrated system for forest fire management has been implemented and put into pilot operation. The system offers services ranging from in-situ forest temperature measurements, to optimization, risk assessment, and decision support for wildfire management. The elements of the system provide real-time functions to detect, monitor and predict the evolution of forest fires along with other operational logistics services. A state-of-art self-organizing expandable fire sensor network is used for real-time in-situ measurements. The network uses sensors deployed camouflaged on trees, which implement a self-organizing RF data network that broadcasts the forest temperature distribution using redundant local control nodes and dynamic-re-routing so as to maintain contact with the central server. This paper presents the requirements, considerations and experience gained in the development and pilot implementation of the in-situ self- organizing network for forest temperature and wild fire monitoring. The pilot implementation took place at "Nea Penteli" forest, located approx 20 km NE of Athens.