April 1, 2005—Smokey the Bear has a new friend in the battle to keep our forests safe. While only you can prevent wildfires, wireless sensor networks can help contain them.

A new creature called the FireBug is helping firefighters out West battle wildfires. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed the FireBug-a GPS-enabled wireless thermal sensor that gathers real-time data from approaching wildfires-to predict the path of destruction, protect people and homes, and keep firefighters out of harm's way.



FireBugs are environmental sensor motes, which monitor temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and light intensity. Each mote runs the TinyOS operating system and uses radio communications to send data to other motes. The motes are networked into "sensor nets" to provide comprehensive real-time data on the environment to a base station. That data is then relayed to a database server and on to a Web browser system so that it can be monitored online.

A team of Berkeley researchers-nearly all of whom have received fire-safety training-has been testing the FireBug system during controlled burns in the San Francisco Bay area since September, and they have reported considerable success. Sensors from the burn zone communicated that temperatures increased and barometric pressure and humidity decreased as the wall of flames approached, indicating that local environment conditions change during fires. The rate of change may indicate the amount of danger and the speed at which the danger is increasing.