Comparative assessment of an indoor localization framework for building emergency response

Abstract

Building emergencies, especially structure fires, are threats to the safety of both building occupants and first responders. It is difficult and dangerous for first responders to perform search and rescue in an unfamiliar environment, sometimes leading to secondary casualties. One way to reduce such hazards is to provide first responders with timely access to accurate location information. To address this challenge, the authors have developed a radio frequency based indoor localization framework, for which novel algorithms were designed for two different situations: one where an existing sensing infrastructure exists in buildings and one where an adhoc sensing infrastructure must be deployed. This paper presents a comparative assessment of this framework under different situations and emergency scenarios, and between simulations and field tests. The paper first presents an assessment of the framework in field tests, showing that it achieves room-level accuracies above 82.8% and 84.6% and coordinate-level accuracies above 2.29 m and 2.07 m, under the two situations, respectively. Moreover, the framework demonstrates considerable robustness in the tests, retaining a room-level accuracy of 70% or higher when the majority of sensing infrastructure is damaged. This paper then synthesizes results from both simulations and field tests, and demonstrates how the framework can be adapted to different situations and scenarios while consistently yielding satisfactory localization performance.

Augmented Reality for Emergency Situations in Buildings with the Support of Indoor Localization

“…Only Simon et al [7], has a solution that gives feedback about the indoor position to the person using the system. In terms of deployment, all solutions except Li et al [6] need a previous installation. On the contrary, our system can be previously installed or can also be deployed by first responders in case the fire destroys the landmark nodes installed or the infrastructure building does not have the system installed.…”

“…In 2014 and 2015, Li et al [5,6] proposed deployment of the beacons during operations in order to construct a building model (BIM) to help in localization. The beacons would be deployed during rescue services, although this would slow the task of rescue.…”

Fireground location understanding by semantic linking of visual objects and building information models

“…In Section 5 we will give some solutions to this problem. Also in the work of Li et al [28] there are several systems evaluated for indoor positioning. Finally, it is important to remark that the usability and the interaction of the applications need to be evaluated.…”

Evaluation Research on Emergency Capability of Emergent Events in Chinses Coal Mine

“…Coal mine emergent events are sudden and uncertain, but emergency capability runs through every stages of emergent events [14,15]. The aim of emergency capability is the prevention, control and elimination of emergent events.…”