doi: 10.18178/ijesd.2020.11.2.1232
Integrated Mobile Veld Fire Detection and Notification System for Rural Communities: A Case of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia
A. Taruvinga1
,
E. Chikohora2 ,
N. R. Jere3 ,
R. van den Dool4
- 1the University of Fort Hare Private Bag X1314 Alice
- 2the Namibia University of Science and Technology
- 3the Walter Sisulu University P.O Box 1421, East
- 4CSIR, PO Box 395; Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Abstract
Socio-economic and environmental impacts of veldfires are acknowledged, documented and widely discussed atdifferent forums. However, what is largely missing are solutionsto reduce occurrence of veld fires mostly in rural areas.Literature also suggests that veld fires are to increase (moreintense and long burning) with warming (hot and dryconditions – climate change). This is likely to affect rural poorhouseholds who largely depend on land-based natural resources(field crops, forests harvest, grazing land); with limited accessto fire brigades, that mainly serves urban cities. With warming(drier and hotter conditions), rural areas who share boundarieswith mountains, rangelands, forests and wetlands are predictedto face greater threats from veld fires because of the dryflammable biomass in these areas. Against these drawbacks andleveraging high mobile phones ownership and networkcoverage in rural areas, we present an integrated mobileapplication for veld fire detection and notification prototyperural households can use to identify high fire danger areas andburning fires in near real time close to their location.
Keywords
- Mobile phones
- rural communities
- veld fires
How to Cite
A. Taruvinga, E. Chikohora, N. R. Jere, and R. van den Dool, "Integrated Mobile Veld Fire Detection and Notification System for Rural Communities: A Case of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 94-98, 2020. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijesd.2020.11.2.1232
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).