The reason I put the monitoring system in the testing site is the ability to monitor the environmental issues in real-time. The data we receive will be different from the online reports from people. While the online reports from people will provide the information about only environmental issues people have confronted, the monitoring tools put on the site will provide the up-to-date data which users can check out right now.
The monitoring tools do not only monitor the forest fires, but they also can monitor the activities and record what is happening on the site. The combination between those monitoring tools will enhance the information and evidence that occurs on the site.
Before the physical structures of the forest fires monitoring system are put on the site, We need to understand the topography of the site first because the landscape of the site will affect the way the physical structure are allocated. This map display the topography of Tanjung Puting National Park. Around the north of the park, the landscape is a bit higher than the south which is actually a coastline. The physical structure normally will be put in higher position to get better vision of the surroundings; however, the landscape of the park is not much different, so the physical structure will be allocated in the area the fires mostly have happened.
The locations and the number of fire observation towers are based on the topography of the site, the range of firewatcher from the tower, and the location of the fires in the past twenty years.
The maps are showing the location of the fire observation towers experiment using visibility analysis. The fire observation towers are located at the higher landscape for better visibility. According to the visibility analysis, at least ten fire observation towers need to be located in the site to cover all the burning areas with the lowest height of the tower.
The landscape of the site is mostly flat, so it does not have much affect on the visibility. However, the height of watchtower is really essential. The higher the tower is, the more visibility the fire lookout people will receive.
The height of the fire observation tower can extend from nine to twenty meters. If the I use the highest height of the tower, the number of the tower will reduce to only five towers to cover the burning areas.
Using drones can cover the blind spots that people from the observation towers cannot see. Drones have much larger range of visibility; however, the most disadvantage of using drones is the limitation of the usage duration. Drones can last only two to three hours before the battery is gone. Therefore, drones are useful when spotting the already existing fires. Air patrolling by using drones will reduce the ground patrolling which is dangerous for firefighter or fire suppression organisation.