Fire outbreaks are a serious risk in campsites due to the surroundings and dynamic environment of these areas. Due to climate change, conditions of high ignition propensity are becoming more frequent, leading to an increased need for the development of alternative fire prevention systems that can mitigate the consequences of fire incidents. In this context, this work explores thermal imaging data for early detection of fire outbreaks, aiming for application in a real context. To that end, experimental trials were conducted in laboratory and at the venue of a summer festival under real operation conditions. The datasets acquired are characterized in detail, and a feature engineering process is devised for the analysis of the response of thermal imaging sensors to a fire ignition. To deal with high-dimensional data, the feature construction method follows a statistical color-based approach, that characterizes the dynamic changes in the data using three features. Subsequently, this paper proposes a fuzzy modeling approach based on these variables, which is transparent to interpretation and enables the assessment of patterns modeled. The performance of the classification algorithm for detection of fire outbreaks is evaluated and framed with works in the state-of-the-art for this application. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.