ISL PhD Student Osama Bushnaq did an internship at the University of British Coloumbia in Canada. His internship was focused on UAV-IoT.
Every year, an average of 2.5 million hectares (ha) is burnt only in Canadian forests, which costs around 500 million to 1 billion Canadian dollars per year. The current forest fire detection methods such as satellite imaging and infrared cameras are not reliable. In order to detect forest fires before getting out of control, a new fire detection method based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Internet of Things (UAV-IoT) network was studied during this internship. A novel system model is designed and optimized such that the probability of fire detection is maximized. The reliability of the UAV-IoT network for forest fire detection is evaluated over different scenarios.