NEW technology developments with wireless networks could have significant applications with early bushfire detection – and much more.
Researchers at a Western Australian university have been employing a solution known as LoRaWAN with success in areas with little or no cellular coverage to monitor environmental data such as temperature, soil moisture and air quality data – and can see how it might be an excellent fit for early detection of bushfires.
This was not its initial purpose – Murdoch University’s Harry Butler Institute partnered with the global technology business Cisco to overcome the challenge of no wireless coverage for delivering information about sensitive environments, especially without having to often personally visit sites.
This saves time and money and also has a lesser impact on the environment.
The technology has been employed for some time on Barrow Island off the north-west coast of Australia for environmental weed monitoring and the results have been positive.
“We’ve been investigating a cost-effective wireless IoT (Internet of Things) solution known as LoRaWAN, that offers low power, long range, wide area network data sensor technology,” Harry Butler Institute business manager, Andre deSouza said.
“The network also succeeds alternatives such as WiFi and Bluetooth, as it doesn’t require cellular network coverage, making it ideal to reach remote areas including national parks.”
WiFi typically only has a range of about 100 metres (Bluetooth devices can have a similar range or even only 10 metres) and 3G and 4G cellular services can struggle over more than 10 kilometres (the new 5G standard whilst fast, is actually very short range, no more than about 300m) but LoRaWAN is engineered to be reliable to about 20km.
Mr deSouza said a pilot program had also successfully moved data between Murdoch University’s campus and Perth city about 15km away and had already expanded on its initial design expectations.
“Our researchers David Murray and Terry Koziniec also demonstrated further innovation by moving images over LoRaWAN – something this network wasn’t even built for,” he said.
“This innovative and efficient technology solution could provide researchers and emergency personnel the ability to monitor remote locations from anywhere, at any time.”
Mr Murray said the pilot has given researchers the confidence to pursue further technological developments to assist the early detection of smoke and fire.
“We’re now looking at how cost-effective cameras can be developed to monitor for bushfires using artificial intelligence models to identify the risk of smoke and fire, and by sending alerts via a LoRaWAN network,” he said.
This novel approach, coupled with weather sensors and low-resolution images that can be sent over the network for manual validation, could alert emergency workers to fire threats much earlier.”
Detecting bushfires earlier in remote locations would also potentially save homes and lives.
Harry Butler Institute pro vice chancellor, Professor Simon McKirdy, said the low-cost technology option was an exciting prospect for the future of environmental surveillance.
“LoRaWAN provides an important option to overcome limitations, save time, money and resources and its potential environmental applications, like supporting emergency bushfire personnel and researchers monitoring vulnerable species such as quenda (a type of bandicoot), will be significant,” he said.
