In Russia’s Novgorod region, a remote monitoring system set up under the Lesohranitel Project aims to detect forest fires at their early stages. The main functions of the system are visual fire detection, automatic fire alarm, location determination, area determination, nearest fire-fighting forces and means, and secure access to the system from any device without special software installation.
In Russia's Novgorod region, a remote monitoring system set up under the Lesohranitel Project aims to detect forest fires at their early stages. The main functions of the system are visual fire detection, automatic fire alarm, location determination, area determination, nearest fire-fighting forces and means, and secure access to the system from any device without special software installation.
The one-operator monitoring system processes video streams in real time, detects suspicious objects, marks them with a red square, sends a message to the operator and registers the event in the event log. The foundations of the system are based on RAPP libraries, and the basic software will be installed on the camera itself using Axis Communications' open camera application platform, which installs a portion of the software onto the camera, thus providing faster analysis.
The technology is unique and was improved on account of experience from the Pskov region, where 53 Axis network cameras were already installed. “Experience from the Pskov region shows that economic efficiency of such a forest-monitoring system is very high; it pays out in the course of one season,” said Dmitriy Anatolyevich, Services Director of Formoza, Axis' local partner.
High-quality outdoor network domes were chosen for the project and installed in areas in Novgorod Oblast. The cameras can operate under a wide range of temperatures from -40°C, tilt of up to 20° above horizon for a total tilt range of 220° enabling better views over uneven terrains. In addition, the auto-tracking feature can help detect and track moving objects, and produce high-quality footage under D/N conditions.
Russian mobile carrier MegaFon installed seven towers in the forest area to secure data transmission among cameras and data-processing servers. Additional buffer zones of camera view areas (approximately 15 km) have been provided around these towers. Data from the servers is transmitted at 50 Mbps to the forest management committee. According to Oleg Anatolyevich Verenikin, Committee Chairman, the system currently covers only 15% of the forestry, and the committee plans to cover the entire region in the future.