Advanced stereovision system for fire spreading study

This paper presents research conducted in the area of stereovision in order to develop a metrological system for the measurement of geometrical characteristics of spreading fires. In the first part, the material and the algorithms used to obtain three dimensional coordinates of fire points are presented. The second part describes the stereovision framework used for laboratory experiments and the algorithms developed to estimate the fire front geometrical characteristics. With this system, a 3D global form of the fire is obtained at each acquisition time and the position of each point of the front, their rate of spread, their height, length, tilt angle, the width basis and the volume of the fire are estimated. In the third part, a stereovision framework developed for the geometrical characteristics measurement of fires at field scale is presented. Complementary information is obtained from different views of the fire. A Human Machine Interface gives the possibility to an expert to define from the lateral view the fire area to study. A three dimensional surface reconstruction of the back fire front is obtained and the height, the length, the position, the rate of spread, the tilt angle and the width of the front are estimated.

► A metrological instrument based on vision for spreading fires is proposed. ► 3D points of the fire are computed and the global shape is built. ► Geometrical characteristics like surface and volume are estimated. ► A stereovision framework working at field scale is presented.