Lidar Technique for Early Forest Fire Detection : Design and Development Aspects

• Published in: Laser and Plasma Applications in Materials Science (AIP Conference Proceedings Volume 1047) Vol. 1047; pp. 50 - 58
• Main Authors: Traiche, M, Bourai, K, Moussaoui, N, Beggar, R, Almabouada, F, Louhibi, D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.01.2008
• ISBN: 9780735405752; 0735405751
• ISSN: 0094-243X
• DOI: 10.1063/1.2999968

Many countries suffer from forest fires every summer, a phenomenon which wreaks havoc on both local and global environment. As well, it causes enormous damage to public health especially for people living in surrounding areas. For fighting against forest fires, ocular surveillance, in spite of its wide use, is not efficient owing to the costly mobilization of a great number of forest agents and to the fact that most of forest regions are not accessible. Other passive techniques such as infrared camera remote sensing are neither efficient under unfavorable weather conditions. An efficient way to early detect forest fires even under worse environmental conditions and in inaccessible mountainous regions uses the backscattering Lidar technique. This consists of the emission of monowavelength laser pulses spanning azimuthally the entire region subject to surveillance and the detection of the backscattered signal. The detection parameter is the signal to noise ration SNR. In this contribution, we will deal with approach and design aspects inherent to the development task of such a Lidar.