Using Drones to Estimate and Reduce the Risk of Wildfire Propagation in Wildland-Urban Interfaces

Forest fires have become one of the most destructive natural disasters worldwide, causing catastrophic losses, sometimes with the loss of lives. Therefore, some countries have created legislation to enforce mandatory fuel management within buffer zones in the vicinity of buildings and roads. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether inexpensive off-the-shelf drones equipped with standard RGB cameras could be used to detect the excess of trees and vegetation in those buffer zones, using the services provided by the bundles of the EU Horizon project Chameleon. The article describes a system that uses drones equipped with RGB cameras to create detailed orthophoto maps and 3D point cloud files of the ground and then identifies trees and vegetation within the buffer zones that must be cut down to comply with the legislation on fuel management within those zones. The article also discusses the results obtained from two use cases: a road surrounded by dense forest and an isolated building with dense vegetation nearby. The main conclusion of this study is that off-the-shelf drones equipped with standard RGB cameras can be effective at detecting non-compliant vegetation and trees within buffer zones. This can be used to manage biomass within buffer zones, thus helping to reduce the risk of wildfire propagation in wildland-urban interfaces.