After numerous disasters hit Mathigiri Forest in Hosur, India, a team of students from the Sri Sai Ram Engineering College Student Branch collaborated with the Kenneth Anderson Nature Society and the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, Cauvery North Wildlife Sanctuary to use their engineering skills to create a solution.
In January 2020, a midnight forest fire greatly impacted the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary. Without an early detection method, especially late at night, the fire did a lot of damage.
They also have experienced issues with wildlife intrusions, like when a leopard got into the village. According to the team, the leopard killed 23 stray dogs, cattle, goats, and cows. It also attacked 5 people and 37 elephants had damaged the crops.
Finally, another issue the team noticed was increasing wood theft and wood trafficking of sandalwood, teak, and timber woods.
To solve these issues, the team used various sensors to create a security system for the forest. This involves the installation of sensor nodes, Internet of Things (IoT) nodes, and LoRaWAN Gateways. After the nodes are installed, they will be connected to a cloud run on the server provided by the NGO, which uses a web application. This application will be monitored, and should the sensors detect something wrong, proper help can be deployed.
Firstly, the sensor nodes will act as forest fire mitigation and environmental monitoring. As part of this section, There are two types of sensor nodes deployed: one at the altitudes of trees which monitors weather, temperature, pressure, air quality, smoke, and flame factors, and the other sensor at ground level under the soil to monitor the rainfall, vibrations, soil moisture factors. This allows the Kenneth Anderson Nature Society and the Tamil Nadu Forest Department to better understand and monitor what occurs in the forest.
The IoT nodes will operate as detectors for wildlife intrusions and wood theft. The sensors have camera modules and PIR motion Sensors. This allows park staff to observe any animal or human activity that can threaten the well-being of the forest.
The LoRaWAN Gateways collects this data and puts it on a cloud for analysis.
This project was made possible through $6,429.00 in funding from the IEEE Standards Association, an EPICS in IEEE partner.