First Responder Location System

This project is funded by National Institute of Justice. The goal is to develop a technology that will assist Firefighter and other Emergency Personnel's for faster and efficient Incident Response

The new system will have three main components: sensors worn on each responder; several reference stations (perhaps mounted on fire trucks at the scene), and a monitoring and display station for the on-site commander, all connected via a wireless network. New signal coding algorithms will provide the accuracy needed to locate people in three dimensions inside complex buildings. The WPI research will be led by professors David Cyganski and Bill Michalson, with cooperation from David Lucht, director of WPI's Center for Firesafety Studies.

Several technologies and areas of expertise 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) to each team member (perhaps via synthesized voice commands), and to the incident 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 full integration with communications and incident management operations.

The overall system characteristics will include:

High-accuracy geolocation, parallel in concept to the Global Positioning System (GPS) but rapidly deployable with no site preparation or on-site calibration procedures, specialized for indoor applications and enhanced in accuracy,
Rugged and miniature low-power user equipment with no controls (always on!),
Portable, rugged, easy-to-use computerized system control unit,
Self-configuring, fault-tolerant, distributed software systems.

Presentations

First Responder Location System: Back End Receiver Design by Jason DeChiaro: 5.1MB PDF
2.4MB PowerPoint
RF Front End Radio Design-Simulations and Specifications by Hemish Parikh: 5.1MB PowerPoint

People at CAIRN working on this project

Prof. William Michalson
Hemish Parikh (PhD student)

Maintained by webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: December 03, 2009 14:18:50