Fire Fighter Location Tracking & Status Monitoring Performance Requirements

Transcription

1 Fire Fighter Location Tracking & Status Monitoring Performance Requirements John A. Orr and David Cyganski Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA

2 On December 3, 1999 Six fire fighters lost their lives in a tragic cold storage warehouse fire in the City of Worcester, Massachusetts. Two fire fighters initially got lost and then two search teams also became lost in the maze and zero visibility from the dense smoke resulting in the six deaths. One of the recommendations of NIOSH and a separate internal review of the circumstances of the fire was: Manufacturers and research organizations should conduct research into refining existing and developing new technology to track the movement of fire fighters on the fire ground. 2

3 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 (in three dimensions) to the incident command post outside the building, Provide status (health and motion) information on each team member, and on conditions in the exit path Provide emergency exit guidance (back-tracking) (perhaps via synthesized voice commands), and to the command post, Provide location precision of +/- 1 ft, (necessitated to prosecute rescue operations in which the question "on which side of the wall are they?" can be crucial) Provide integration with other incident management communications. 3

4 Overview, Firefighter Locator System GPS Signal Personnel Unit Reference Unit, known location Phys Monitor Reference Unit, known location Reference Unit, known location Command and Control Unit GPS reference Positioning signal System control User-Commander link 4

5 Real-Time Deployable Personnel Geolocation Vehicles (red) drive up to a building and use reference units (blue) to locate and display tracks of fire fighters. Exits and other key building features may be marked on the fly. 5

6 using telemetry from dropped sensors... Sensors may be deployed by the fire fighters that monitor conditions and update tracks to indicate paths that may not be retraced (red). 6

7 automatically computing escape routes... Escape routes can be intelligently computed and displayed that take into account impassible paths (green). This information may be automatically passed to the fire fighter as computer generated audio instructions on a private communications channel. 7

8 with GIS (Geographic Info. Sys.) overlays. If GIS information such as complete floor plans are available, they can be integrated with the track display to assist route planning and other time-critical decisions. 8

9 Two kinds of location system now available Global-scale outdoor-only systems with common extraterrestrial infrastructure 3D GPS and DGPS systems with 10 to 30 meter accuracy. Room-scale, short-range indoor systems with inplace site-calibrated infrastructure Usually combines 2-D range-range or range-angle location units with pre-wired infrastructure located in virtually every compartment of the coverage space. 9

10 Example short-range systems Shipboard personnel locator: transponder in every compartment Health care facilities: may pre-wire the facility with transponders and/or guard only the exits Inventory management: more benign environment, often very short range Technologies developed for each of these systems can contribute to the Firefighter Locator system 10

11 Needed: Fire Fighter Location System Operations-scale, medium-range, rapidly deployable 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 11

12 Locator System Requirements Draft Overall 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 12

13 Locator System Requirements Draft Max size: 30 in 3 Battery life: 50 hrs + Environmental specs: Temperature range :? Shock:? Personal Unit 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? 13

14 Locator System Requirements Draft Base 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 ft 3 ), 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 on technology choices 14

15 Technical Challenges Multipath: the indoor radio environment is much more problematic than the outdoor situation. Signal reflections pose a fundamental issue with respect to precision of location. Portability and quick set-up: The goal is for the response vehicles to drive to the incident site and be ready to go with the geolocation system. The most significant problem is reference initialization (site self-calibration). Size, cost: make maximal use of commercial modules to minimize cost while minimizing size. Usability: Human factors and software engineering to maximize usability with relationship to existing GIS information. 15

16 Typical Geolocation Technologies GPS approach Insufficient resolution (10 m), insufficient signal strength in 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 16

17 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. The central control unit directs personnel to drop repeaters where appropriate. Enhanced Differential GPS approach Use high-order spectral processing techniques to leverage multilink 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 through properties of new UWB signals/systems. 17

18 Research A complete solution to multipath mitigation and high resolution location for operations-scale geolocation requires recently developed and new signal processing and information fusion algorithms combined with emerging UWB technology. At WPI, to form reliable (zero drop-out) and accurate (submeter) position estimates, our faculty with research expertise in mobile information systems, automatic target recognition and signal processing have identified key technologies: Super-resolution" and Direction of Arrival" based signal extraction technology developed by the radar and automatic target recognition research communities COFDM technology and smart antenna systems developed by the mobile communications industry 18

19 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, and firesafety 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), 19

20 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 20

21 Other Applications Law enforcement: Monitoring of police officer location indoors and outdoors Hostage situations Military, particularly urban operations 21