We present a novel decentralized Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) algorithm which can estimate both the speed and direction of an evolving diffusive hazardous phenomenon (e.g. a wildfire, oil spill, etc.). In the proposed scheme we approximate a progressing hazard’s front as a set of line segments. The spatiotemporal evolution of each line segment is modeled by a modified 2D Gaussian function. As the phenomenon evolves, the parameters of this model are updated based on the analytical solution of a Kullback – Leibler (KL) divergence minimization problem. This leads to an efficient WSN distributed parameters estimation algorithm that can be implemented by dynamically formed clusters (triplets) of collaborating sensor nodes. Computer simulations show that our approach is able to track the evolving phenomenon with reasonable accuracy even if a percentage of sensors fails due to the hazard and/or the phenomenon has a time varying speed.
