Drones: Another Tool to Find Potential Fire Hazards
Drones: Another Tool to Find Potential Fire Hazards in High-Risk Areas
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Add wildfire prevention as another way to use drones.
Humans are now putting drones to use to identify potential fire hazards in high-risk areas.
Joseph Hupy is a professor in Purdue University’s School of Aviation and Transportation Technology and a member of Purdue’s Institute for Digital Forestry. He recently explained to the Associated Press how drones can be used to prevent wildfire disasters.
“Wildfire hazards really relate a lot to the properties that people have in what is an increasingly urban environment moving into what would be considered forested or wild environments,” Hupy said.
When people move into these environments, they want the amenities of nature like trees close to a home or wood-shingled roofs and branches in the lawn, which are also associated fire hazards. Homes built near wooded areas or log cabin-style homes are often at a higher risk for wildfires.
“Drones are a great source to identify the hazards,” said Hupy. “Drones can deploy where they’re wanted, but they can also provide information in a way that we get a lot more detail, and we’re capturing detail that we couldn’t capture before.”
Using drones overhead to identify these hazards is seen as more effective and can be done cheaply with more detail than satellite imagery. Drones can gather information like the steepness of slopes, fire hydrant locations, vegetation and trees near buildings. This data can then be used to develop guidance for firesafe buildings and communities.
Some insurance agencies are using aerial information from drones to identify potential fire hazards in high-risk areas too.
“There’s a lot of interest from the insurance industry in this, but there if we look outside of the insurance industry, there is a lot of effort going on in terms of just doing ground-based surveys,” Hupy added.
Currently, the way hazards are dealt with typically relates to local ordinances, local zoning codes or through a product of the insurance industry.