A Novel Approach to Fire Detection With Enhanced Target Localisation and Recognition

ABSTRACT Real‐time monitoring of fires is crucial for safeguarding lives and property. However, current fire detection methods still suffer from issues such as redundant feature information, poor network generalisation capabilities and low perception of target location information. To address these challenges, a novel fire detection method called YOLO‐FDI has been proposed. This method utilises partial convolution and coordinate convolution with attention mechanisms and Alpha loss at different stages. Specifically, to enhance target localisation accuracy, an attention mechanism is integrated into the model to autonomously focus on fire‐affected areas. In terms of feature extraction, partial convolution is employed to reduce computational redundancy and memory access, improving performance and effectively extracting spatial features. During the feature fusion stage, coordinate convolution embeds feature information into coordinate data, further enhancing the coordinate perception capabilities of pixels on the feature map, thereby improving adaptability and accuracy in detecting fire targets. Additionally, the model utilises Alpha loss to enhance flexibility and robustness in fire object detection and recognition. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model based on three self‐constructed datasets. Compared to the baseline YOLOv7 model, its mAP has improved by 4.5 percentage points, 1.7 percentage points and 2.6 percentage points, respectively. This method demonstrates the capability to accurately represent fire targets and exhibits better stability and reliability in fire target detection, effectively reducing false positives and missed detections.