The influence of external factors on false alarms in an infrared fire detection system

There have been many studies on the use of different automatic wildfire detection systems, yet few long-term analyses of any of these techniques have been reported. In this paper we present the results obtained from the study of an infrared fire detection system that has been working in the field for more than 10 years, over which period it produced 10 519 false alarms. This article gives a brief description of the system and discusses the false alarms, showing that factors that are often not taken into account in the development of fire detection algorithms, such as camera orientation, the type of surface being monitored, or the time of day, can lead to false alarms being triggered.