Patent ID: 8368757
Filing Date: 2013-02-05
Classification: A62C,G08B

Abstract:
1. A method of monitoring territories and detecting forest and surface fires with a monitoring system including: a first complex of means stationed at a minimum of one monitoring site, said complex comprising: a camera mounted at an elevated location with the ability to tilt and swivel, the horizontal swivel range being at least 360°, control and evaluation means connected to the camera and running image-processing software for detecting smoke and/or the fire in images from the camera, and having control software, memory for storing events and the images, and an interface to communication means; a second complex of means installed at a manned central station and comprising a computer including an operating, display and monitoring workplace, control software, memory for the events and the images, means for mixing and outputting the images to at least one monitor, and at least two interfaces to the communication means; the communication means including: first bidirectional communication means for image files, data, and voice to interconnect said first and second complexes; and second bidirectional data and voice communication means to connect said second complex with deployed firefighting crews, the method comprising: a) dividing an observation area of the monitoring site into observation sectors each corresponding to a horizontal aperture angle of a lens of the camera; b) selecting a horizontal angular distance between adjacent observation sectors to create an overlap between them; c) aiming the camera by positioning means at said observation sectors in automatic succession, or in any order under manual control from the central station; d) after aiming the camera, providing a plurality of the images timed for adaptation to dynamics of the smoke and the fire; e) sending the images to a control unit of the monitoring site for storage as an image sequence; f) processing the images in the control unit of the monitoring site with the image-processing software for detecting the smoke and/or the fire, the image-processing software responding to a presence of the smoke and/or the fire by issuing an event message and data relating to a location and magnitude of the event; g) if the event message is generated, using the control software of the monitoring site to mark the location of the event in a pertinent one of the images based on the data concerning the location and the magnitude of the event, and to compress the image and to transmit the image to the central station together with an alert message comprising an identity of the monitoring site, an identity of the observation sector, a direction of and an estimated distance to the location of the event; h) visibly or audibly reproducing the alert message received at the central station, decompressing and storing the image, and displaying the image either automatically or in response to a manual request; i) at the central station, entering a manual request and communicating the request to the monitoring site, causing the control software at the monitoring site to extract image portions corresponding to the marked location of the event from the images of a current image sequence, to compress the image portions, and to transmit the image portions as an image sequence to the central station; j) when the image portions corresponding to the marked location of the event are received at the central station, the images portions are decompressed, stored, and displayed as a continuous sequence in a fast-motion display mode, and said sequence is inserted into an overall image, or is displayed in a large-scale format the method further comprising: eliminating sources of false alerts including settlements, streets and roads, and surfaces of bodies of water where the smoke may occur by manually calling up and displaying at the central station images of the observation sectors, or a panoramic image with the marked observation sectors of the monitoring site, causing the control software to outline by a polygon of a suitable shape the portions of an individual image, or of the panoramic image, which may lead, or have previously led, to other false alerts; causing the control software of the central station to determine parameters of the polygon and to communicate the parameters as exclusion areas to the control software of the monitoring site; determining manually at the central station whether event messages pertaining to exclusion areas are to be reported to the central station, and causing the control software at the central station to communicate results of the determining step to the control software of the monitoring site; in case the image processing software issues the event message, the control software of the monitoring site checking whether the message pertains to a least one of the exclusion areas; and in case the event message pertains to the exclusion area, the control software of the monitoring site proceeding if instructed to report the event messages to the central station, but without assigning an alert status to the event messages.