FireWatch operates automatically. The camera sites require only occasional main- tenance. However any alert has to be verified by trained personnel at the central control office operating FireWatch Office. Depending on the number of cameras included in the system and the importance of a continuous human- aided monitoring you may want to allocate sufficient central control office staff for uninter- rupted attendance, final decisions and further actions. Generally it is recomen- ded that one operator controls up to 5 towers.

FireWatch is based on state-of-the-art technologies:

• advanced camera systems,
• digital image processing
• LiMAX technology with wideband
  CDMA radio transmission.

With any forest fire, smoke is created, it smoulders and spreads long before the fire itself is taking its share fiercely. Therefore smoke gives a very early and reliable signal for a developing fire. By comparing a sequence of pictures image by image, the image processing logic of FireWatch recognizes smoke over great distances within a couple of seconds.

LiMAX has been developed to transmit digital data reliably over poor media. The air is such a poor media with interference and signal distortion. The wideband CDMA technology as used by FireWatch has been designed by IQ wireless specifically for the transmission of high data rates over long distances at a very low error rate.