Audio–video fire-detection of open fires

In the scope of the development of a video-based fire detection system, investigations on the dynamic behaviour of open flames have been made [Schultze. Untersuchungen zur Audio-Video-Detektion von offenen Bränden, Diploma thesis, Duisburg, 2003]. Standardised fires were recorded with different audio and video systems and their flow and flickering analysed. The analyses show that the flickering of flames is not only viewable in the video data, but also detectable in the acoustic recordings. Using a block-based motion estimator it is possible to trace the movements of flames. Due to the high velocity of flame movements this motion estimation is however only successful in high speed recordings. Therefore a simplified flow analysis has been developed in order to trace the characteristic pumping movement of flame balls in turbulent open flames. The simplified flow analysis is applicable on usual video recordings and should be considered for implementation in an automatic flame detection system.