fire fighter location tracking & status monitoring ... fighter location tracking & status...
TRANSCRIPT
5/18/051
WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Fire Fighter Location Tracking & StatusMonitoring Performance Requirements
John A. Orr and David Cyganski
[email protected], [email protected] and Computer Engineering Department
Worcester Polytechnic InstituteWorcester, MA 01609
http://www.ece.wpi.edu
5/18/052
WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
On December 3, 1999
Six fire fighters lost their lives in a tragic cold storagewarehouse fire in the City of Worcester,Massachusetts. Two fire fighters initially got lost andthen two search teams also became lost in the mazeand zero visibility from the dense smoke resulting inthe six deaths. One of the recommendations of NIOSHand a separate internal review of the circumstances ofthe fire was:– Manufacturers and research organizations
should conduct research into refining existingand developing new technology to track themovement of fire fighters on the fire ground.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Personnel Location
Several technologies can be brought to bear on this problem,ultimately resulting in a wearable device, which will:
Identify the current location of each rescue team member (inthree dimensions) to the incident command post outside thebuilding,
Provide status (health and motion) information on each teammember, and on conditions in the exit path
Provide emergency exit guidance (back-tracking) (perhaps viasynthesized voice commands), and to the command post,
Provide location precision of +/- 1 ft, (necessitated toprosecute rescue operations in which the question "on whichside of the wall are they?" can be crucial)
Provide integration with other incident managementcommunications.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Overview, Firefighter Locator System
GPS Signal
Personnel Unit
Reference Unit,known location
Command and Control Unit
Phys Monitor
Reference Unit,known location
Reference Unit,known location
GPS referencePositioning signalSystem controlUser-Commander link
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Real-Time Deployable Personnel Geolocation
Vehicles (red)driveup to a buildinganduse reference units(blue) to locateand display tracksof fire fighters.Exits and otherkey buildingfeatures may be“marked” on thefly.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
… using telemetry from dropped sensors ...
Sensors may be deployedby the fire fighters that monitor conditions andupdate tracks to indicatepaths that may not beretraced (red).
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
… automatically computing escape routes ...
Escape routes can beintelligently computedand displayed that takeinto account impassiblepaths (green). This information may beautomatically passedto the fire fighter ascomputer generatedaudio instructions ona private communicationschannel.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
… with GIS (Geographic Info. Sys.) overlays.
If GIS information suchas complete floor plansare available, they canbe integrated with thetrack display to assistroute planning and other time-criticaldecisions.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Two kinds of location system now available
Global-scale outdoor-only systems with commonextraterrestrial infrastructure– 3D GPS and DGPS systems with 10 to 30 meter
accuracy.
Room-scale, short-range indoor systems with in-place site-calibrated infrastructure– Usually combines 2-D range-range or range-angle
location units with pre-wired infrastructure located invirtually every compartment of the coverage space.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Example short-range systems
Shipboard personnel locator: transponder inevery compartment
Health care facilities: may pre-wire the facilitywith transponders and/or guard only the exits
Inventory management: more benignenvironment, often very short range
Technologies developed for each of these systemscan contribute to the Firefighter Locator system
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Needed: Fire Fighter Location System
Operations-scale, medium-range, rapidlydeployable system for emergent situations
Requires high-precision 3D location Auto-calibration for Rapid Deployment Reliability in the face of component failures GIS integration Decision Support Capabilities
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Locator System Requirements DraftOverall System
Number of dimensions: 3 Accuracy: +/- 1 ft Maximum range: 2000 ft Max number of simultaneous users: 100 Fundamental capabilities:
– 3-D location of each user relative to a chosen reference point– Relative locations among users– Graphical display at base station– Graphical path information on all users– Self rescue information to users (audio)
Enhancements:– Physiologic information telemetry– Integration with stored databases: geographic and structural
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Locator System Requirements DraftPersonal Unit
Max size: 30 in3
Battery life: 50 hrs + Environmental specs:
– Temperature range : ?– Shock: ?
Positioning/donning requirements on user: none Startup/setup procedure: none (power switch?) Each unit contains unique identifier code Physiological information telemetry: ? Integrated with present turn-out equipment Headset (optional) for self-rescue voice synthesis Integrated with communications gear?
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Locator System Requirements DraftBase Station
Components:– Command/Control unit, Reference units
Command/control unit– Graphical display: Plan, elevation views of users, selectable path
display for each user, with floor plan overlays if available– Integrated with communications gear?
Reference Units– Small (1 ft3), truck-mounted and/or hand-carried into position
Overall Architecture– Self-configuring, fault-tolerant network for positioning and data
communications
Note: Base station configuration is dependent ontechnology choices
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Technical Challenges
Multipath: the indoor radio environment is much moreproblematic than the outdoor situation. Signal reflectionspose a fundamental issue with respect to precision oflocation.
Portability and quick set-up: The goal is for the responsevehicles to drive to the incident site and be ready to gowith the geolocation system. The most significantproblem is reference initialization (site self-calibration).
Size, cost: make maximal use of commercial modules tominimize cost while minimizing size.
Usability: Human factors and software engineering tomaximize usability with relationship to existing GISinformation.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Typical Geolocation Technologies GPS approach
– Insufficient resolution (10 m), insufficient signal strengthin buildings and multi-path degraded
Range-only or range/angle information– Does not present 3-D solution for multilevel structures
Inertial navigation– Extremely expensive and absolute position estimate drift
Dead reckoning (pedometer devices)– Rapid absolute position degradation and no 3-D
“Homing”– Not sufficient for “maze” navigation need in a rescue
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Candidate Technologies
Smart Self-Extending Network approach– A highly redundant network of inter-communicating repeaters is
created on-the-fly to automatically build zero multi-path cells. Thecentral control unit directs personnel to drop repeaters whereappropriate.
Enhanced Differential GPS approach– Use high-order spectral processing techniques to leverage multi-
link diversity as a multi-path solution. Smart Antennas, Super-resolution and Adaptive DSP
– Use adaptive algorithms to reduce and ameliorate multipath. Ultra wideband signal approach
– Obtain high-resolution and multi-path immunity throughproperties of new UWB signals/systems.
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Research
A complete solution to multipath mitigation and highresolution location for operations-scale geolocation requiresrecently developed and new signal processing andinformation fusion algorithms combined with emergingUWB technology.
At WPI, to form reliable (zero drop-out) and accurate (sub-meter) position estimates, our faculty with research expertisein mobile information systems, automatic target recognitionand signal processing have identified key technologies:
“Super-resolution" and “Direction of Arrival" based signalextraction technology developed by the radar and automatictarget recognition research communities
COFDM technology and smart antenna systems developedby the mobile communications industry
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Related WPI Faculty Research Centers
The Center for Firesafety Studies– one of the world's leading laboratories for R&D in
topics including combustion/explosion phenomena,fire and smoke performance of structures, andfiresafety design.
The Fire Protection Engineering Program– the first Fire Protection MS program in the US was
established at WPI in 1979, and the first US Ph.D.program was added in 1991),
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Related WPI Faculty Research Centers
Center for Wireless Information Network Studies– Mobile communications and indoor geo-location
Satellite Navigation Lab– Global positioning systems
Machine Vision Lab– Radar/Sonar signal processing and Automatic Target
Recognition Convergent Technologies Center,
– Networking, Distributed computing and fault tolerance NECAMSID: The New England Center for Analog
and Mixed Signal Integrated Circuit Design– RF/Microwave analog design
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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Other Applications
Law enforcement: Monitoring of police officerlocation indoors and outdoors
Hostage situations Military, particularly urban operations