Evaluate and Design: Context-aware computing for bushfire firefighters

Nguyen, Vu Ha

Supervisor: David Kearney

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Introduction• Bushfires are a major problem in Australia because

there can be significant loss caused to animals, assets and people....

• Bush fire authorities all over Australia are increasing seeking answers to these questions: 1) How can we fight a bushfires more effectively ?2) How can we minimise the impacts of bushfires which

are too big to fight?

• One way is to provide better information about the fire to people who are affected.

• This project aims to provide context-aware computing to bushfire fire fighters.

Context-aware computing• What is context-aware computing?

“Context-aware computing is a computing paradigm in which applications and services can take advantage of contextual information such as user and device location, state, time of day, nearby places….” (Danny R. 2006)

• What is context-aware computing used for? “Context-aware computing is to acquire and utilize

information about the context of a device to provide services that are appropriate to the particular people, place, time, events, etc.” (Thomas & Paul 2001)

• In this research?Aims to evaluate and design and context-ware

computing for bushfire fire fighters.

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Fire fighting

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Incident Management Team

Current communication during the bushfire

IR airplane

Fire trucks

approach

Fire Fighter Communication During Bushfire

• Basically, when a bushfire happens, an Incident Management Team (IMT) establishes an temporary base to deal with the emergency.

• Meanwhile, fire trucks approach the fire area and try to control the fire.

• During the bushfire, IMT has the responsibility to collect all the information about the bushfire such as wind direction, wind speed, temperature and so on.

• If needed, an airplane which equipped with IR camera will fly above the fire and report back to the ground base about the fire situation.

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Fire Fighter Communication… cont…

Note that: there is a person on the plane holding the camera and describing the fire situation by his own visual. (based on human surveillance)

• All the communication in the air and on the ground are done by the UHF radio which provides unstable communication and few number of channels.

• Fire fighters and base are not able to know their exact locations during the bushfire.

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Public• Bushfire is notified mainly to public through the Radio

broadcasting.

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Motivation

• A firefighter said “Firefighting is making a lot of decisions on little information”. (Takayama, L. and J. A. Landay 2004)

• And it is true: Sometimes, fire fighters are too busy to exchange

the information with the base Then base may not be able to update the fire fighting situation and provide the best advices to fire fighters.

UHF radio channel could run out of the channel the communication becomes nearly impossible.

Motivation (cont…)There is no real-time image of the fire. It takes almost 24

hours before any images can be seen.Firefighter and base are not able to track down all the fire

fighters’ location during the bushfire. The person who living near the bushfire area normally

does not notice the bushfire when it happens immediately, sometimes it is a little too late. So knowing when bushfire happens early certainly will reduce the affection caused by bushfire.

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Goals (cont…)• Limitation in communication Limitation in providing

the information. • How could bushfire fighter have all the information

right in their hands during the fire combat?Design and implement a context-aware computing to be

able to:Provide real-time information during the fire combat.Provide an overview of the fire with the real-time images.Provide a GPS location of each firefighter on the screen. Provide the Alerting Message System.

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Literature review

Context-aware computing

Bill Schilit (1994) defines context-aware computing by putting it into 4 categories: Proximate selection: a user-interface technique,Automatic contextual reconfiguration: process of

adding, removing the components, alerting the connection between components due to context changes.

Contextual information and commands: which can produce the different results according to the context in which they are issued

Context-triggered action: simple IF-Then rules used to specify how context-aware system should be adapt.

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Literature review

Guanling Chen and David Kotz (2000) provides two definition for context-aware computing:Active context awareness: an application automatically

adapts to the discovered context by changing its behaviors.

Passive context awareness: an application presents the new and updated context to interested user or makes the context persistent for user to retrieve later.

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Literature reviewResearch in context-aware computing

Shopping Assistant (Abhaya A., Mark C., and Paul K. 1994) device guides the customers through store: provides the information about items, location, price analysis, automatically recognise customer (regular or new)… etc. Active Context: Customer’s location within the store.

• A hand-held wireless communications device and the PSA (Personal Shopping Assistant) that the customer provided.

• A Centralized server located in the shopping center to which the customer communicates using the PSA.

• Centralized server maintains the customer database, the store database and provides audio/visual responses to inquiries from tens to hundreds of customers in real-time over a small area wireless network.

Shopping Assistant

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Literature review

CyberGuide (Albrecht Schmidt 1999): provides information services to tourists about their locations, directions, finding the location’s background, leave the comment on interactive map and suggesting the places of interest. Travel diary is also provided.

CyberGuide includes 4 components:• Cartographer (mapping)

• Librarian (information)

• Navigator (positioning)

• Messenger(communication)

Cyber Guide

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Literature review (cont…)Research for Firefighter

• Kremens, R., J. Faulring, et al. (2007) discuss about developing “a compact device to Monitor and Report Firefighter Health, Location, and Status.” The research is to develop a hardware.

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Literature review (cont…)

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Research questions• How can the ideas and research results from context

aware computing be applied to the problem of “providing information to bush bushfire fire fighters (and members of the public who might be affected by the fire)”?

Sub questions:• What type of information can we provide?• How should it be presented? • What underlying technologies are best able to

provide the most widely available coverage? (What type of devices could be used?...)

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Decision Questions

• What programming language will be used?Java 2 micro edition (J2ME) with Java 2 Wireless Toolkit.

• Client-embedded or Browser based application?Client based and web based.

• Screen size?Supports almost every screen size.

• How to located the client in the network?Using GPS coordinates

Will the application be able to work with other devices?Yes, that’s one of advantage of Java: write one and use

anywhere.21

Methodology

Bushfire Aware

• Design *

• Implement

• Evaluation

* : might be changed after the survey done

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Design

• An local-based mobile application which is installed on mobile device and getting bushfires updates from server.

• A trial server would be setup to exchange the data with the users.

• Main group of user:Fire fighters

• Each type of user will be able to access the different information (some information, only the fire fighter is provided)

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Design: User Interface

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Design: User Interface (cont…)

First SectionLatitude (Lat): A position's distance north or south of the

equator, (measured by degrees) from zero to 90. One minute of latitude equals one nautical mile.

Longitude (Long): The distance east or west of the prime meridian (measured in degrees). The prime meridian runs from the north to South Pole through Greenwich, England.

Temperature: display the current temperature.Approximate fire area: display the fire area.Wind speed: display the speed of wind.Heading: the direction of wind.Estimated area: estimated area affected area after 1 hour.

All the information will then be sent to a server25

Design: User Interface (cont…)

Second section: Display the overview of the fire area. The colours will be

used to indicate the fire area.Display the firefighter mates, base, fire trucks locations.

Third section:Alerting message: display the important message such as

wind changes, temperature rises, abandon the area….

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Implementation

• Smart dust mote will be attached to each mobile devices (collects temperature, toxicity)

• GPS phone will be used to collect all user’s coordinates

• Set up the trial server which allows user to connect to using the application.

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Server

Client 1

Client 2

Client N

…

Exchange the data

Evaluation

• Aims to test the application with fire fighter and public.

• Conducting a survey and evaluating the context-aware with fire fighters at Country Fire Service (CFS).

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Timeline

• Completing the User Interface: mid of September• Implementing the UI and application: end of

September• Getting the feedback: mid of October.• Modifying (if needed) and finish the UI: end of

October.

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Result: System diagram

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Result: System diagramClient (Mobile device) and Server (Web browser). • Mobile Client side

Written in Java 2 Micro Edition and run on Nokia N97 phone (using Symbian OS) with built-in GPS

Phone will be able to access the Google Map server via internet

• Server SideWritten in JavaScript/HTML with Servlet engine (using

Glass Fish 3 server) Obtain the location information from the firefighters.Display the overall scene of fire fighting (number of

firefighters, location, and affected area) and also submit all the required information.

Access to the Google Map Server via internet. 31

Testing Scenario

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Central Server IMT

Communication during the bushfire

Fire tracker phone application equipped(GPS)

Fire tracker phone application equipped (GPS)

Google Map

Send the lo

catio

n info to

Approaches Approaches

Request and

receive the map

Reque

st an

d

rece

ive th

e m

ap

Request and receive the map

Send the location info to

Send the w

eather,

others loca

tion in

fo toSend the weather,

others location info to

Testing Scenario• Fire truck station (Incident Management Team) will establish a local network

(internet accessible).

• Incident Management Officer open the Fire Fighting Monitor program.• Phones connect to the network and display firefighter’s current location

• The Central Server will receive all the current locations of each firefighter and display the whole bushfire firefighting scene on the screen which includes:

Number of firefighterCurrent locations of all firefightersAffected area.

• Incident Management officer sends the information to all firefightersCurrent Temp: 100 degreeWind speed: 80 km/hPress “Send to Fire Fighters”

• Each firefighter will receive those information and display on their phone.

• As the fire is too dangerous, Incident Management Officer press “Abandon The Area” button

• All the firefighters receive the Abandon message then abort the firefighting.

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Fire Fighter Tracker (screen shots)

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Fire Fighter Tracker (screen shots)

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Features

• Providing the current location (in Longitude and Latitude) of the firefighter (user) – blue marker.

• Providing the real satellite images of fire area.• Displaying the current temperature, wind speed

information.• Displaying the current location of other firefighters.• Providing the visual of the fire are (This function

requires Google Map Enterprise License to be able to work on the mobile device).

• Display the “Abandon” message from base.• Allowing zooming in or zooming out the map.

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Central Server Application

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Features

• Providing a live firefighting situation.• Providing the locations of each firefighter.• Providing the visual of the fire area.• Providing the real satellite images of fire area.• Automatically zoom in or zoom out to be able to

display all the firefighters’ locations.• Allowing sending the temperature, wind speed

information to all firefighters.• Providing the Emergency button to call off the

firefighting if the situation is too dangerous for firefighters.

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Conclusion

• Both applications work properly during the test.• The research provides the expected outcomes:

A completed design for User Interfaces based on the survey and bushfire fighter’s requirements.

A completed web-based monitoring server for Incident Management team.

A completed client/server which allows user to connect and exchange the data.

• These applications will obviously improve the firefighting situation at the moment.

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Limitation

• The screen of mobile phone is big enough ? Due to the size of the screen, some information is not available on the phone.

• Mobile phone devices are fairly expensive phones• The co-operation from Country Fire Service.• Wi-Fi network may be not reliable.• There is a limitation of number of the requests that

this program could send to free Google map service. (Google map Enterprise License is purchased)

• Time is also a key factor in this project.

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Improvement• A Web-based program is implemented for Incident

Management officers. Allowing officer to easily visual the whole firefighting situation.

• An emergency button also is implemented in the program so the officer from Incident Management base could be able to quickly ask all the fire fighters to abandon the affected area.

• Allowing sending the temperature, wind speed information to all firefighters.

• Satellite image service is also implemented to enhance the view.

• Zoom in, out functions allow user to have more control with the map

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Future works• Registered mobile phone owner get notification• Also, if time is permitted, the idea of setting up a

web-based application would be an option for person who doesn’t want to install program on their phones.

• Program will provide more accurate fire affected area.

• Voice over IP will be used in the program.• Program will be tested widely and some improvement

will be added later on.• Program would be able to run without internet

connectivity (offline mode). • Program would use its own data map or licensed

map. 42

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References

[1] Abhaya A., Mark C., and Paul K.. “An indoor wireless system for personalized shopping assistance.” In Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, pages 69-74, Santa Cruz, California,December 1994. IEEE Computer Society Press.

[2] Chen, G. and D. Kotz (2000), “A Survey of Context-Aware Mobile Computing Research”, Technical Report TR2000-381, Dept. of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, November 2000.

[3] Dey, Anind K. (2001). "Understanding and Using Context". Personal Ubiquitous Computing 5 (1): 4-7. doi:10.1007/s007790170019.

[4] Kremens, R., J. Faulring, et al. (2007), "A Compact Device to Monitor and Report Firefighter Health, Location, and Status." 8 the International Wildland Fire Safety Summit: 26-28.

[5] Moran, T. P. and P. Dourish (2001). "Introduction to This Special Issue on Context-Aware Computing." Human-Computer Interaction 16(2, 3 & 4): 87-95.

Thanks for listening !

Any questions ?!?

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