Forest Fire Surveillance Through Deep Learning Segmentation and Drone Technology

Forests are essential to our planet's well-being, playing a vital role in climate regulation, biodiversity preservation, and soil protection, thus serving as a cornerstone of our global ecosystem. The threat posed by forest fires highlights the critical need for early detection systems, which are indispensable tools in safeguarding ecosystems, livelihoods, and communities from devastating destruction. In combating forest fires, a range of techniques is employed for efficient early detection. Notably, the combination of drones with artificial intelligence, particularly deep learning, holds significant promise in this regard. Image segmentation emerges as a versatile method, involving the partitioning of images into multiple segments to simplify representation, and it leverages deep learning for fire detection, continuous monitoring of high-risk areas, and precise damage assessment. This study provides a comprehensive examination of recent advancements in semantic segmentation based on deep learning, with a specific focus on Mask R-CNN (Mask Region Convolutional Neural Network) and YOLO (You Only Look Once) v5, v7, and v8 variants. The emphasis is placed on their relevance in forest fire monitoring, utilizing drones equipped with high-resolution cameras.