Revolutionizing Wildfire Detection with Convolutional Neural Networks: A VGG16 Model Approach

Over 8,024 wildfire incidents have been documented in 2024 alone, affecting thousands of fatalities and significant damage to infrastructure and ecosystems.Wildfires in the United States have inflicted devastating losses.Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense, which highlights how urgently efficient warning systems are needed to avoid disastrous outcomes.The goal of this study is to enhance the accuracy of wildfire detection by using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) built on the VGG16 architecture.The D-FIRE dataset, which includes several kinds of wildfire and non-wildfire images, was employed in the study.Low-resolution images, dataset imbalance, and the necessity for real-time applicability are some of the main challenges.These problems were resolved by enriching the dataset using data augmentation techniques and optimizing the VGG16 model for binary classification.The model produced a low false negative rate, which is essential for reducing unexplored fires, despite dataset boundaries.To help authorities execute fast responses, this work shows that deep learning models such as VGG16 can offer a reliable, automated approach for early wildfire recognition.To reduce wildfire's impact, the VGG16 model achieved an accuracy of 97.5% and produced a low false negative rate, which is crucial for minimizing undetected fires.