A Novel Mechanism for Fire Detection in Subway Transportation Systems Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

Fire is a common and disastrous phenomenon in subway transportation systems because of closed environment and large passenger flow. Traditional methods detect and forecast fire incidents by fusing the data collected by wireless sensor networks and compare the fusion result with a threshold. However, this approach has a significant shortcoming. Fusion of data decreases the amount of useful information since the distribution of data is not considered. In this paper, a novel mechanism based on wireless sensor networks is proposed and we can use the mechanism to detect fire in subway transportation systems. The core algorithm in this mechanism is an alternative of data fusion in wireless sensor networks. The mechanism uses the quantity information acquired from the data and also considers the distribution information of the data in order to predict the occurrence of fire incidents. The simulation results show that fire incidents can be detected fast and efficiently. © 2013 Zhen-Jiang Zhang et al.