Forest Fire Hub

Forest Fire Hub Sponsor and conceptualization this project developed by

Olivier Michel / cyberbotics / webots_ros

Visit: https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots-projects/tree/master/projects/forest_firefighters#readme

Tutorial video 

More information on how to generate it in the readme (https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots-projects/pull/16)

(https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots-projects/tree/master/projects/forest_firefighters)

# Forest Firefighters
This simulation features a small forest wildfire and a few firefighter robots: a couple of drones and legged robots equipped with cameras.Users can run the wildfire simulation and program the behavior of the robots to fight the fire.They can also improve the models of the robot and even design new ones.![fire](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12995815/131650395-876f5ce5-ecdc-4eb7-83bc-a86f94709e32.png)Connect at www.forestfirehub.com for more information about this project.

# Demo VideosThis video shows a wildfire propagating into one tree until the tree is completely burnt:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1264964/130241653-c0fd0966-1ce2-41d1-aeae-452a187b95be.mp4
This video shows a Mavic Pro 2 that fights against a wildfire (speed x2):
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12995815/131981332-7b0c6105-5910-4962-8e67-b953e10be9d6.mp4

# Creating Your Own Firefighter Robots
In order to contribute to this simulation by developing your own robot models and program their behavior you will have to follow these steps:
1. download and install [Webots](https://cyberbotics.com) on your computer.2. install [python 3.8](https://www.python.org/downloads/) on your computer if not already installed.3. follow the [Webots Tutorials](https://cyberbotics.com/doc/guide/tutorials) to get familiar with the software.4. [clone](https://docs.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/cloning-a-repository-from-github/cloning-a-repository) this repository on your computer: `git clone https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots-projects.git` or download it from [here](https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots-projects/archive/refs/heads/master.zip) and unzip it.5. run the simulation by opening the [forest_firefighter.wbt](worlds/forest_firefighter.wbt) world file in Webots.6. edit the robot controllers to change their behavior.7. create new robot models (or improve existing ones) and use them in the simulation.
For steps 6 and 7, please refer to the Webots [User Guide](https://cyberbotics.com/doc/guide/index) and [Reference Manual](https://cyberbotics.com/doc/reference/index) to get started with robot programming and robot modeling.

# Technical Details
## Forest GenerationAn efficient and customizable forest can be generated using the proto `protos/UnevenForest.proto`.The size of the trees, the dimension and the density of the forest are all parameters of the proto.
Half burned forest using the forest generator:![burned](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12995815/131650414-fb5fe445-c74d-4c89-bc05-562f6a304ef3.png)
## FireThe fire starts randomly at one of the trees of the forest.It propagates randomly and according to the wind to other trees close to it.The fire of a tree stops naturally once the tree is completely burned.If some water dropped by a robot goes sufficiently close to a tree on fire and if the fire is not too big compared to the amount of water dropped, it extinguishes the fire instantly.The fire is run by a supervisor which can be found in [controllers/fire/fire.py](controllers/fire/fire.py).Some fire parameters can be changed in this file:
– `Fire.MAX_PROPAGATION`: the maximum distance that the fire can propagate in meter.
– `Fire.MAX_EXTINCTION`: the maximum distance from which water can extinguish the fire. – `Fire.FIRE_DURATION`: the duration of a fire to consume a tree completely. – `Wind.INTENSITY_EVOLVE`: the speed at which the intensity of the wind evolve.   – `Wind.ANGLE_EVOLVE`: the speed at which the angle of the wind evolve. – `Wind.RANDOM_EVOLUTION`: true if there the wind evolves randomly, false otherwise.   – `Tree.ROBUSTNESS_VARIATION`: the variation in the robustness of the trees (if a tree is more robust, it is less likely to burn).
## Wind WindowThe Wind window allows the user to modify the intensity and the direction of the wind during a simulation.The random evolution of the wind can activated/deactivated.
<div align=”center”><img src=”https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12995815/131666969-df9b520f-338d-42fc-a533-8e0a161edcc1.png”></div>
## Mavic Pro 2 Demo ControllerThe Mavic controller is a simple example controller.The keyboard can be used to move the robot and drop water on the forest fire.
![mavic](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12995815/131667338-302ff820-19ff-4736-8195-b48d1c55a3ad.png)
## Spot Demo ControllerThe Spot controller is a basic controller that just moves the legs of the robot. The keyboard can also be used to throw water on the forest fire

forestfirehub.com is a “suggestion box” for gathering and collaborating on  innovation ideas. To create discussion to disseminate the adoption of new breakthrough technology. In a process of looking at forest fire in a new and unorthodox way, to provide new solutions. Search new concept, which sounds like something straight out of science fiction.

An evaluation of mathematical models using Machine Learning. Creating virtual environments to modeling and problem solving. Testing virtual solution to use in real- world as a sustainable open source with the lowest cost, for the automation of forest fire fighting processes anywhere in the world. The project is inspired by the revolutionary aspects of Linux that are social, not technical. From the beginning, with the aim of being casually modified by volunteers coordinating only through the Internet. The quality maintained by the simple strategy of obtaining feedback and insights from users, creating a kind of gradual and participatory evolution. Freely redistributable, anyone can create a distribution. Empathy is the connecting factor between developers. The source code to be used, modified and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of GNU General Public License.

Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force.  Newton’s first law explains why it takes extra force to get moving This same principle serves to explain the difficulty of starting a project

Precision Firefighting

Introduce the concept of Precision Firefighting for Early Site Specific Fire Management. As “a management strategy that uses information technology to bring data from multiple sources to bear on decisions associated with firefighting. Encompassing techniques and methods for firefighting management by taking into account their local and site-specific heterogeneity and variability.

Cross Border Cooperation is a key element to be considered

The age of fire is upon us, climate change is subverting the system. The fires of this new era cannot always be tamed. Neither aircraft nor ground crews can do much for the blazes that spread quickly with powerful winds. That has forced firefighting “to be a global effort, not a state or national effort. Time to rethink the system of neighbours resource sharing.

Finding and identifying opportunitys, developing the projects for installation and operating the microgrids.

Code, create and collaborate with community to make your Forest Fire Hub more than the sum of its parts

Swarm Intelligence Models in Simulated Environment For Autonomous Drone and Quadruped Robot Wildfire Suppression

The forestfirehub.com Hackathon Challenge is a Virtual Collaboration open to anyone with innovative concepts willing to revolutionise the current state of forest fire fighting.

An evaluation of mathematical models using Machine Learning. Creating virtual environments to modeling and problem solving.

See Our Sister Sites | Digital Suggestion Box

sense-hub.com

safeairship.com

Fire seasons are running longer, stronger, hotter.

The trend is not going away. More firefighting equipment are, of course, needed. With the situation seemingly getting worse and not better, how can we turn a losing battle on its head? 
One way is to apply some of our biggest tech innovations.

We decided to run a crowdsourcing effort.
Big data is already being used to understand and predict wildfire spread, but how can some of the other big technology trends potentially help?
If we can apply to the worsening problem of destructive wildfires some of the innovations from the tech sector’s best-funded, exciting and emerging technologies, we may have to opportunity to make a huge difference in response.
Technology has the potential to change that, facilitating collaboration through new channels and tools for conducting cross-disciplinary (Internet of things (IoT),Swarm intelligence (SI), Automato Quadruped Robotics and UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicles) in a computer-simulated environment, predicting trends and building strategies to turn data into actionable insights.

This Forest Fire Hackathon was born out of that realization—that we needed to play catch up and find new models for autonomus firefighting to protect firefighters.

Ideas to highlight technology’s impact and find solutions to forest fire.

A data-driven hackhaton to identify the most relevant solutions globally, as an open source thinking approach to wildfires.
Further into the future, artificial intelligence and autonomous robots are in a growing category of devices playing a larger role to fight fires on the ground will become commonplace. It’s not a giant leap to teach these systems how to spot patterns and conditions from images of vegetation that commonly lead to a fire breaking out or spreading rapidly.

It’s not much of a stretch to believe that such technologies will soon help in the battle to contain wildfires. Fast response are required.

Let’s start a Cooperative work to accomplish shared goals, gathering and collaborating on innovation ideas. To create discussion to disseminate the adoption of new breakthrough technology. In a process of looking at forest fire in a new and unorthodox way, to provide new solutions.

Using data to find new concepts, like:
Models designed for mission-critical systems to identify potential issues related to autonomous firefighter robots. Environmental modeling simulation as an Experimental Approach to Optimal Aerosol Dispersion of fire extinguishing agent, via goal-oriented groups of drones and quadruped robot addressing Swarm intelligence (SI) for optimization.

Mission:
Run a crowdsourcing effort, to tap the collective wisdom, also opened an online suggestion box (forestfirehub.com). A space where people can discuss and develop ideas and software infrastructure to enable the next generation of drones and robotics companies to simulate firefighting robotic fleets. Develop a computer simulation modeling to test quadruped robot and autonomous drones and their swarming algorithms to understand and evaluate ‘what if’ case scenarios in the form of open-source software.

Idea validation:
Viability of automatically optimized aerosol fire extinguishing agent dispersion by drone and quadruped in dynamical system.
Getting a picture cost-effectively and without endangering humans could increase the efficacy of preemptive burning, reducing the impact to lives and property.
That will help ensure the autonomous robots will operate well in the real world.
In a computer simulation modeling the drones would fly over a burning area and,by examining the vegetation and wind direction and other factors, predict the fire’s spread and direction. With that information they would then precisely drop retardant to stop the fire as Joint Coordination Activity with Quadruped Robots on Internet of Things.

What Types of Insights Are Possible?
The question is, how can you most effectively use computer simulation modeling to understand and evaluate ‘what if’ case scenarios to autonomous firefighting advantage?

Wildfires don’t yet have the equivalent of a grand unified model to explain their behavior.

You could argue that a wildfire is the most complicated natural disaster, because it’s both a product of atmospheric conditions—themselves extremely complex—and a manipulator of atmospheric conditions.

The contributing factors are just so different, and work on such different scales—air dynamics for one, the aridity of local vegetation for another.

But fire is to a large degree predictable.
It follows certain rules and prefers certain fuels and follows certain wind patterns.

A great challenge from the complexity of flow dynamics and the high cost of numerical simulation.

You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Every wildfire is different and should be treated in a unique way.

There is work yet to be done to improve the computer-generated fire images in the simulated environment for training the artificial intelligence, self-organising swarms of drones and quadruped robot designed to engage in autonomous fire suppression in decentralised multi-robot systems.

Pick your favorite strategy to Computer-Simulated Environment for Modeling and Dynamic- Behavior-Analysis to extract insights from machine learning models. 
Modeling firefighting with reinforcement learning, neural networks (CNN), game theory, machine-learning algorithms, and other techniques, to predict the behavior of wildfire and plan optimal approaches for containment.

Computer models using data, math and computer instructions to predict events in the real world.

Essentially rule-based structures for making decisions.

In general, conforming to commercially available tech, specification, standards and current regulatory guidance.

Why Are These Insights Valuable?
Inspire, motivate and be curious about the data and the possibilities it has for firefighting
Spot the potential opportunities.

These insights have many uses, including:

Data Analysis:

Customizing data as insightful visualisations
Directing future data collection
Extrapolating current trends

Designing for scale:
Designing with the next generation of drones and quadruped robots in mind. 
Building for error-prone environments in the real world.
Informing feature engineering

Integration:
Informing human decision-making
New efforts without disrupting current and future fire fighting forces

Smart Action Planning:
Intelligently route the right alerts to swarms of robots operations
Customizable alerts are triggered or cleared at specific severity levels to help strategic planning.
Cross Border Cooperation in microgrids

Always Alert:
Proactive issue detection and prevention models. 
Time analysis and alert propagation brings down fire alerts time from hours to seconds.

Ethical Concerns

Certainly, drone and robotic quadruped will need to play by the rules and follow regulatory guidelines, especially in emergency situations.

Evaluating, as Open Source recommends, a variety of issues including ethical concerns by contributors representing a wide range of viewpoints.

Wildfires are destructive forces, but they can occur naturally. Because of this, certain plants and animals have evolved to depend on periodic wildfires for ecological balance.
It might seem counterintuitive that a fire, which burns plant life and endangers animals within an ecosystem, could promote ecological health. But fire is a natural phenomenon, and nature has evolved with its presence.
Human-induced climate change promotes the conditions on which wildfires depend, increasing their likelihood — according to a review of research on global climate change and wildfire risk.
In the end, it is true that the burden of preventing uncontrolled wildfires lies with humanity

FIRE IS CHAOS

Fire doesn’t care what it destroys or who it kills—it spreads without mercy, leaving total destruction in its wake.
We can’t end wildfires altogether, but by better understanding their dynamics, ideally reducing impact from disasters.
Fire is its own element, but it’s influenced by a few key variables: wind, temperature, and humidity. The computer simulation is a place that allows researchers to tweak each of those, and fire extinguishing methods:
Cooling, starvation, smoothering, chain breaking mechanism or blanketing.
Perhaps using Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) as hotspots to activity directed at limiting the spread of fire and extinguishing (dropping fire retardant)

Not meant to be competitors with the firefighters, we want to be complementary
Because drones can fly day or night and gain rapid access to previously inaccessible urban or rural fires they can help to save both the lives of the public and first responders. Using intelligent robots to scout the area and drop water or Fire Retardant can allow humans to stand further back from the danger zone, only looking at the drones’ data to make decisions from the safety of a command and control centre.

Firefighting automation is inevitable. It’s just a matter of time when tech will have the potential to alleviate challenges people face every day.

Cross Border Cooperation is a key element to be considered

The age of fire is upon us, climate change is subverting the system. The fires of this new era cannot always be tamed. Neither aircraft nor ground crews can do much for the blazes that spread quickly with powerful winds. That has forced firefighting “to be a global effort, not a state or national effort. Time to rethink the system of neighbours resource sharing.
Finding and identifying opportunitys, developing the projects for installation and operating the microgrids.

Precision Firefighting

Introduce the concept of Precision Firefighting for Early Site Specific Fire Management. As “a management strategy that uses information technology to bring data from multiple sources to bear on decisions associated with firefighting. Encompassing techniques and methods for firefighting management by taking into account their local and site-specific heterogeneity and variability.

A hackathon organizational rules facilitate broad participation, knowledge aggregation, and learning. would expand the range of possible solutions to the problems that algorithms create, enhance tech accountability, and foster public participation and learning.

To ensure continued development, it is necessary to encourage public participation. A key concern on development efforts associated with resource sharing. Built a software stack to support monitoring and management models that could get the initial developments off the ground.

We are looking forward to partnering and helping to grow this collective effort.

People who participated will at least have a better understanding of the problem. Data is just input. The insights people provide should be the most important output.

Creative thinking to reduce forest fire risk.

If you’ve ever seen Smokey the Bear, you know that “Only YOU can prevent wildfires.” Over the past several years, you’ve probably watched news reports about the great damage that wildfires can cause. In addition to destroying forests, wildfires can burn homes and even take lives.

Did you realize, though, that not all forest fires are bad?

Forest fires are a natural and necessary part of the forest’s life cycle ecosystem.

Global warming is a threat because fire can only, intensify, and spread in hot, dry weather. As climate change brings on longer, drier summers, Humanity will have to live with more and more risk of more and more serious wildfires, and that we have to take decisive steps to manage the growing danger.

Forest fires make headlines across world every year. They regularly devastate millions of acres of forest and sometimes threaten entire communities with sudden, catastrophic violence.

Mitigation

There’s a vicious cycle connecting forest fires and climate change: warmer temperatures make fires more likely, and burning forests release greenhouse gas pollution that makes global warming worse.

This means that overall efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming will also help prevent forest fires. And on the other hand, working to reduce the number and severity of forest fires will also help slow climate change.

Inovative Adaptation

How do we “get used to” a world with much more wildfire?

Fortunately, there are a number of inovative individuals thinking about how to reduce forest fire risk.

Systems created and share as a emergency-response. An open source fire breaks as a hyper-experimental, free project, from the crossover of  current technologies.

Generally, fire is extinguished with the help of water or carbon dioxide.

The goal, is to raise the level of control of forest fire reducing the use of water and chemical fire retardants. Discussing new technologies including diverse application possibilities, according to the need and size of each forest fire.

Remote fires run their course by burning freely without human interference  Increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) . Fire is inevitable, and climate change will make it more common and more dangerous: it makes sense to face this chalenge.

We need to adapt our wildfire response strategies to a world of more frequent, more intense fires.

Collaborate makes it easy for teams to save, share and sync projects.  Collaborating like free Open Source Developers. Getting better and better at coordinating wildfire response.

Firefighters are equipped with knowledge and skills (to put out fires). But accidents happen.

These are unpredictable events.

Many effective and innovative firefighting strategies are already in place. They may be applied autonomously aerially or from the ground. Quadruped robot, drones or even autonomous or semi-autonomous heavy machinery can be used.

In one hyper-experimental technique, compressed CO2/water is used both for atomizing the soil and for carrying it to a spray gun.

Using electrostatic spray system and atomizers, for atomizing a high solids soil paste. Soil with the increase of moisture. For each type of soil, a model with best fit can be used, considering the cohesion of sandy textures and greasiness of clay. Based on the plasticity properties of the soil. With diferentes tipes of mixtures of sand, and water.

The application processes are, for example, spraying, dripping, electrostatic spraying.

The droplets follow the lines of the charge field, so it is possible to achieve “wrap-around”, and obtain adequate coverage by spraying from one side only.

It is economical in the use of water, and there are other savings such as lower logistic costs.

A low cost equipment, which would bring an increase efficiency and savings of the firefighting. New technologies are capable of modernizing and cheapen the firefighting in our major forests.

This method is useful for areas with local naturally occurring deposits  of grained soils

Clay is a finely-grained natural rock or soil material that combines one or more minerals with variable amounts as well as water content, and become plastic due to particle size and geometry.

The mixtures of sand, and water may be used as a fire retardant  to slow or stop the spread of fire or reduce its intensity.

 This is accomplished by creating a fisical barrier  that reduce the flammability of organic material or delay their combustion. Working as a Fire retardants they may also cool the fuel through physical action.

The forest became a less easily ignited less-vigorously burning materials.

Combustibility is a measure of how easily a substance bursts into flame, through fire or combustion. This is an important property to consider when a substance is used for elevating the degree of difficulty required to cause the combustion of a substance.

There are different types of technologies that enhance the electrostatic spraying.

A system of drop electrification allows to transform a common hydraulic sprayer (or Fire sprinkler system) in an electrostatic.

Inducing the appearance of attractive forces between the particles in flight and the target.

The hot gas of the flame contains positively charged ions and electrons. The reason there are ions is that the heat of the gas is such that some of the electrons can free themselves from the attraction of their atom.

The major characteristic of this new system is that the electrostatic nozzle is capable of making the same job that the hydraulic does, but adds the capacity of generating electrostatic charge, making the drops also deposit in all parts of the leaves”.

The differential of this equipment is that the drops are charged with more efficiency for the plant interior that sprays the product (compressed CO2), attempting to reach the most hidden regions, such as branches, leaves.

The efficiency of this method can vary depending on factors such as the flow and the working pressure of the equipment; the isolation capacity of the equipment material; weather conditions such as relative humidity and temperature; water / clay characteristics such as pH, viscosity and volatility; however, in either situation you can always increase the degree of deposition by the electrical attraction between the drops and the target.

Putting out forest fires is dangerous and difficult. Firefighters have to endure being in burning forests, facing extreme heat and hazardous smoke, for days.

Another challenge was how to get the heavy tools, into the burned remote areas . When equipment is the difference between success and failure.

Dealing with fires in remote isolated areas is different compared to other fires where you can have fire fighting logistics. Like heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing firefighting tasks. There’s also the smoke to contend with, which often contains combustion byproducts and contaminants that are harmful to human health.

Water bombings from helicopters are not effective for stopping all forest fires, because the water only reaches the tops of the trees. It quickly evaporates from the heat even before reaching the ground.

In the case for foret fire distributed in the remote areas, create different types of extinguisher. By offering fire fighters a tailored solution choose, helping firefighters put out forest fires.

The choice of method depends on the type and local of forest fire.

One of the way to stop fire  from remote forest areas is by flooding them, so water goes into the pores among the roots and puts out the fires.

Producing a dense smoke as used in smoke signal technology featuring a self contained ignition system, could have a similar effect.

Safety is important with this method, so all the safety precautions must be observed.

CO2 fire extinguishers discharge CO2 gas.  This is stored in the extinguisher as a liquid, and the gas is created under pressure when the handle of the extinguisher is squeezed.

Unlike water and foam extinguishers, CO2 fire extinguishers do not work by cooling the fire.

Instead, CO2 extinguisher work by replacing the oxygen surrounding the flames with carbon dioxide, meaning the fire can no longer burn.

It should be effective do not leaving any residue behind when they are used.

They replace the oxygen in the air with CO2 so risk of asphyxiation if used in confined spaces.

In case of remote areas a smoke blankets are started from the generators deployed to the most vital points for protection, the distance depending on how hard the wind is blowing.

A predictabel algoritm can help to define the targets to creat effective broken lines in the fire.

The generators of CO2 may be placed autonomously by drones when necessary. Have benn designed for the purpose. Smoke properly placed makes a more eficiente extinguisher

It is also importante to consider a processes that do not produce combustible substances as a by-product.

Special precautions are required for substances that are easily dispersed

The more unstable the atmosphere, the more quickly smoke is lifted and dispersed.

These measures may be used exceptionally in remote forest areas, distant from possible human presence

Safety measures for firefighters

The process of gas Ionization by which a molecule acquires a negative or positive charge by gaining or losing electrons, may be used in conjunction . In electrostatic spraying, the method of atomizing and delivering the CO2 is the same as with the methods described but, in addition, an electrostatic field  is created between the fire and the gas.

The gas follow the lines of the charge field, so it is possible to achieve “wrap-around”, and obtain adequate coverage by deploying from one side only.

Understanding these diferences in forest fires is essential for assessing the potential of the various applications of wild fire mitigations that already exist or have been proposed.

As it is directed towards open source equipment, it expands access to technology by low-income countries fulfilling its social role.

For Last:

Introducing airships into the world’s aerial firefighting-mix could contribute to combat wildfires.

Airships have been used in the past and provided great services to society. Due to current needs, airships should be reconsidered and returned to the skies.

Such a technology would have applications to reduce forest fire emissions they are a significant source of carbon dioxide (CO2), not only affecting its interannual variability but also biogeochemical cycles with consequences for climate.

The use of this technology provides a significant increase in the safety for forest fire fighters (therefore, firefighters in general).

Please check this link to see a theoretical possibility of safeairship https://safeairship.com/

Let’s dare to innovate

Really pushing boundaries and exploring new ideas (like Laser cooling techniques ). The idea of making things cold by hitting them with lasers is beautifully counter-intuitive

Sonic Fire Extinguisher working with  photoacoustic lasers that beam sound with light.

Sound waves have the potential to control oxygen and burning material. If these two gets separated, the fire dies away. It works by deep bass sounds.

The photoacoustic effect or optoacoustic effect is the formation of sound waves following light absorption in a material sample. In order to obtain this effect the light intensity must vary, either periodically (modulated light) or as a single flash (pulsed light).

Most generally, electromagnetic radiation of any kind can give rise to a photoacoustic effect. This includes the whole range of electromagnetic frequencies, from gamma radiation and X-rays to microwave and radio. Still, much of the reported research and applications, utilizing the photoacoustic effect, is concerned with the near ultraviolet/visible and infrared spectral regions.

Share your idea and let’s innovate together

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