Here is a trial of a bush fire detection system
http://www.firewatchaustralia.com/the-firewatch-system
They seem to be looking for smoke during the day and fireglow at night. Interestingly they are using black and white images.
Here is a report on three systems one of which uses off the shelf cameras.
https://www.ag.gov.au/Publications/Documents/RemoteFireDetectionTrialsEvaluationofThreeFireDetectionSystems/FireDetectionPublicReport.pdf
It is a good idea to research how other people solved the problem.
This topic seems like quite a challenging one for a school project. You might want to very carefully define your objectives so that you have a problem you can solve.