YOLO-Based Models for Smoke and Wildfire Detection in Ground and Aerial Images

Wildland fires negatively impact forest biodiversity and human lives. They also spread very rapidly. Early detection of smoke and fires plays a crucial role in improving the efficiency of firefighting operations. Deep learning techniques are used to detect fires and smoke. However, the different shapes, sizes, and colors of smoke and fires make their detection a challenging task. In this paper, recent YOLO-based algorithms are adopted and implemented for detecting and localizing smoke and wildfires within ground and aerial images. Notably, the YOLOv7x model achieved the best performance with an mAP (mean Average Precision) score of 80.40% and fast detection speed, outperforming the baseline models in detecting both smoke and wildfires. YOLOv8s obtained a high mAP of 98.10% in identifying and localizing only wildfire smoke. These models demonstrated their significant potential in handling challenging scenarios, including detecting small fire and smoke areas; varying fire and smoke features such as shape, size, and colors; the complexity of background, which can include diverse terrain, weather conditions, and vegetation; and addressing visual similarities among smoke, fog, and clouds and the the visual resemblances among fire, lighting, and sun glare.