Distributed IoT Systems Providing Salient Features for Safety of Firefighters - EDOT Technologies

Project Center in Tirunelveli - EDOT Technologies

Firefighters are typically exposed to dangerous environments where a sense of vision, auditory, and direction is blocked by smoke, dusts, or flame. Some environments are even “infra-less”; power and communication infra is destroyed. Any commands and signals from outside are unavailable, so recognizing directions and making decisions are usually difficult. To protect and save lives of firefighters, we propose a system, ATHENA that provides salient features including tracking and navigation, emergency monitoring and notification, and information sharing among co-workers. ATHENA is a result of an on-going project supported by Korea Government. This paper provides an overview and demonstration of ATHENA.

A survey of the survey of the Korean Ministry of Public Safety and Security reports that more than two for every ten thousand firefighters died on duty every year [1]. Firefighters typically perform their jobs in disastrous environments where obstacles such as smoke, dusts, flame, and/or explosion/boom often block sense of their vision, auditory, smell, and direction; statistical data reports that more than 90% of vision and about 99.9% of auditory tend to be lost in fire environments [2] [3]. Also, firefighters’ apparatus including fire suits, oxygen tanks, helmets, and boots are typically heavy and often make dull the sense of touch, smell, and auditory. In addition, substances such as smoke, dusts are usually deleterious to firefighters’ health, which sometimes causes injuries or casualties [4] [5] [6]. Furthermore, some environments are even hazardous “infra-less”; infra including power and communication was destroyed, thus use of lighting, ventilation, and communication media (such as GPS, LTE, Wi-Fi) is impossible, and any signals or commands from outside are not reachable. That is, firefighters are “isolated” in a fire scene. There have been reported that many firefighters died in these infra-less environments [7]-[11]. The reasons were that firefighters could not recognize correct location and directions to an exit [7] [8], could not properly detect emergency situation (e.g., lack of air-pressure, abnormal heartrate, backdrafts) [9] [10], and/or could not communicate with co-workers and even lost some of them [8] [11]; especially in the incident reported in [11], missing of a veteran firefighter was recognized after more than seven hours later. There must be a solution to protect and save lives of firefighters in these hazardous infra-less environments. To address this problem, a project has been funded by the Korea Government, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning [12] and the Ministry of Public Safety and Security [13]. The purpose of this project is to develop a system, called ATHENA that have capabilities to support and protect firefighters in infra-less environments. Project Center in Tirunelveli In this paper, we introduce ATHENA; what features it provides; what underlying architectures and system configurations it has; and how it really works. The structure of the remaining of the paper is as follows. In Section 2, ATHENA project is introduced with ATHENA’s salient features. In Section 3, underlying architectures and system configurations of ATHENA are explained, and its demonstration results are given in Section 4. We will conclude the paper with a summary of contributions and future works in Section 5. 

Challenges in Infra-less Fire Environments Before introducing ATHENA, We first describe the challenges that firefighters typically encounter in infra-less fire environments. • Loss of senses (including sense of vision, auditory, smell, touch, and direction). Although this challenge may also exist in infra-available environments, it becomes much more severe in infra-less environments. As power infra was destroyed, lighting and ventilation are not available; imagine damp and dark basement enveloped in smoke and dusts. In this situation, it is difficult to identify obstacles and find correct direction to a survivor or an exit. • Loss of connection from outside. Communication infra was broken, so any guides/commands from outside cannot be reached to firefighters inside a fire scene. Without having supports from command center, it is difficult to monitor current situation and co-worker’s status and to make decisions (e.g., keep going, or return). In addition, it is also difficult to identify or estimate current location and direction without GPS, LTE, or Wi-Fi. • Loss of communication with co-workers. Firefighters usually perform their job in a group of 4-5 members. Under the destroyed communication infra, the only method available to communicate with co-workers is human voice or two-way radio. Human voice is too small to communicate due to roars/booms in fire scenes. Also, using a two-way radio device is usually difficult since a firefighter’s hands are often occupied with safety devices. 

To address these challenges, a development project has been funded by the Korea Government, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning [12], and the Ministry of Public Safety and Security [13]; it has been started in 2015 and is still on-going. The purpose is to develop a system that help protect and save lives of firefighters in infra-less fire environments. Disaster and Safety IoT Research Section in Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) [14] has been leading the project, with the Korea Fire Institute (KFI) [15], Sancheong (a company that produces air respirators and SCBAs) [16], and other related academic/industry partners. We also have been collaborated with National Fire Service Academy [17] and a local fire service headquarter [18] in order to collect real/substantive user scenarios and validate the project results. The system, called ATHENA has been developing and its prototype is currently available. Its salient features are introduced in the following section.  

Salient Features of ATHENA AHTENA is embedded in each firefighter’s equipment, and provides the following services to address the challenges explained. • PDR (Pedestrian Dead Reckoning) [19] and map matching. ATHENA detects current location and direction of a firefighter, which addresses the loss of senses challenge. ATHENA’s PDR engine continuously tracks and saves location and direction of the firefighter during working. The current location of the firefighter is mapped to a point of a map of the building (this map is downloaded before the firefighter going into the building), and the map is shown on head-up display or a firefighter’s hand-held device. • Safety monitoring and notification. It is difficult to promptly identify and respond to emergency situations due to loss of senses and loss of connection from outside.

https://edottechnologies.in/

The safety monitoring and notification feature provides simultaneous monitoring of emergency criteria and gives notification when certain criteria reached. Two types of emergencies are monitored: environmental and personal emergency. For the environmental emergency, environmental data such as gas (e.g., CO) concentration, temperature, and thermal image, around the firefighter is monitored. For the personal emergency, the firefighter’s bio-data (e.g., heartrates, posture), and remaining air in his air tank is monitored. When any type of emergency happens (e.g., abnormal heartrate), ATHENA notifies the firefighter with an alarm sound and a display icon. • Co-workers monitoring. EDOT Technologies A group of ATHENA construct a local Sub-GHz (currently 915 MHz) wireless network, which addresses the loss of communication with co-workers challenge. The range of a Sub-GHz network is wider than Wi-Fi and we believe that it is sufficient to cover all firefighters working in a same group. One ATHENA broadcasts critical data (e.g., emergency status, current location) to other ATHENAs through the network. Based on the received data, the firefighter can monitor other members and respond promptly when any member faces a problem. • Data sharing and augmented intelligence. ATHENA has a special feature that can combine information received from other ATHENAs and provide an augmented information. For example, an ATHENA, e.g., A01 detects an obstacle or explosive spot and broadcasts the information to others; then other ATHENA, e.g., A02, receives that information and marks that obstacle/spot in the map that A02 has. • Navigation service. Firefighters must return safely after finishing their duty. ATHENA provides navigation service to guide a firefighter to an exit, which addresses the loss of senses challenge. The navigation route is calculated based on locations that the firefighter has passed and information about detected obstacles and explosive spots. The disasters such as [7] [8] might not have been happened if this navigation service was available. 

https://twitter.com/edottechno1