Vendors Develop Location and Tracking Solutions
September 04, 2007
By Katie Kelley
Several businesses and universitities are working on different aspects of first-responder location-and-tracking solutions. Various technologies, from Wi-Fi to mesh networks to GPS to tradional LMR, are being tailored to boost the safety of mission-critical professionals.
Azure Wireless developed SafeScene, an automatic accountability system for first responders entering an emergency scene. The system detects a transponder tag affixed to a first responder on arrival and then wirelessly transmits data from the tag to a gateway. The gateway, a device that can be installed in the trunk of an emergency vehicle, transmits that information to a notebook computer or tablet at the command post. “We found that there is a huge need in the public-safety end for an accountability system that allows for management to detect the arrival of first responders automatically and not in the traditional means,” says John Polakowski, president of Azure Wireless.
The first responder’s name, agency, other identity information, qualifications, medical information, training, and an image of the person can be transmitted to the command post. SafeScene is limited to providing only on-scene arrival information — not in-building tracking — and Polakowski is unsure if the industry is any closer to tracking first responders indoors. “I think that’s a dangerous promise to make, and I don’t know if it’s something that anyone can keep,” he says.
Active Control Technology (ACT) deployed a system to track miners who often work in unstable 
environments with obscure radio frequencies. Steve Barrett, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of ACT, says that the technology, ActiveMine, was developed in response to the U.S. coal mine disasters in 2006. The system uses wireless mesh Wi-Fi technology in open spaces, rather than penetrating through the ground, and enables wireless, real-time electronic tracking of personnel, production, and equipment. The system provides clear, digital two-way voice communications with miners, data and mine production applications, and live video. ActiveMine was designed specifically for mines, the technology is appropriate for use by emergency personnel, Barrett says.
The FIRE system from San Francisco-based Moteiv was developed by a few University of California at Berkeley graduate students who were developing hardware and software for building various applications such as wireless and peer-to-peer applications. A proof-of-concept of FIRE was pitched to the Chicago Fire Department, an ideal location for the system because of an ordinance requiring all buildings with more than eight floors to have digital floor plans, says Joe Polastre, co-founder and chief technical officer (CTO).
Moteiv combined its Tmote Sky wireless sensing platform and Boomerang software into a system that downloads the digital floor plans of the buildings onto software and uses already deployed nodes in a building to “talk” with each other to transmit data. Each firefighter wears a FireEye, a helmet-mounted system relaying information during an emergency.
They can now combine digital maps with the condition of the fire, health, and vital signs,” says Polastre. “It’s a much more active system [than RFID].” Polastre says FIRE is a “bucket-brigade style” system that allows firefighters to pass data between each other, as well as send information to an incident commander outside. While the system has been tested, it has yet to be deployed as the components are in the process of being produced by Moteiv’s customers and partners although Polastre estimates the system will cost about $1,000 per firefighter.
Summit Safety offers the Pathfinder, which transmits an ultrasonic homing signal from a beacon integrated into the firefighter’s personal alert safety system (PASS) device to a tracker, which indicates a path through open spaces, according to Wayne Haase, owner of the company. Haase and his son Zachary Haase, a former firefighter, developed the technology after the 1999 Worcester, Mass., fire. Both men, who live several miles from the incident, were distraught over the lack of technology, and they happened on ultrasound technology to track first responders. “If you look at line-of-duty deaths over the last 25 years, almost all of those situations have occurred when the firefighter is within 25 to 50 feet of an exit,” Haase says.
The tracker can trace a path of approximately 125 feet within a building to the three different types of beacons: the firefighter beacon, exit beacon, and auxiliary beacon. The firefighter beacon is worn by the firefighter, the exit beacons are placed on or next to exits as a firefighter enters an emergency scene, and auxiliary beacons are what Haase says are “catch-all” or bread-crumb beacons. His system only uses ultrasonic technology. “There is a distinction between knowing a person’s location in a building and knowing the path — knowing how to find him in a building,” Haase says.
Orsi, a German company, developed its Orsi hand terminal to transmit a position signal to a control room. The GPS-based terminal transmits to the Orsi beacon, which acts as a transmitter broadcasting a unique code or ID every second to the control room to determine location outdoors, according to company officials. The technology is designed to penetrate thick building materials, such as armored concrete walls, officials say. “A special concipated communications network with additional antennas, slot cables, etc., has to be installed to guarantee proper communications,” says Manfred Meisel, export manager of Orsi. “Radio experts know about these phenomenas and provide special-made indoor radio communication systems.
See the October issue of MissionCritical Communications for a detailed article titled "New Research Promises Firefirghter Tracking" on work by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on firefighter tracking technology.”
Katie Kelley is associate editor of MissionCritical Communications and RadioResource International. Contact her at kkelley@RRMediaGroup.com.
