CTTC is proud to present the IOPES (Indoor-Outdoor Positioning for Emergency Staff) project, aimed at developing an end-to-end solution able to provide a positioning and tracking system for emergency teams, no matter whether their members are located either outdoors or indoors or if there are available communication services.
In emergency situations, three are the main issues identified by experts:
1. The lack of information about the location of emergency team members, especially when operating indoors
2. The use of cartography not recent enough to identify obstacles interfering with the operations of the aforementioned teams
3. Limitation of the TETRA communication system related to the area it covers and the low capacity of data transmission, which makes the exchange of information difficult beyond voice itself. Furthermore, the use of civil infrastructures like 3G or 4G communications should be avoided since these might not be available after a disaster occurs.
The consortium, with 7 partners from 5 countries, identified a series of improvements to develop: a personal, wearable, indoor & outdoor positioning system to be integrated into an Emergency Management System to provide tracking information, the use of an ameliorated communications system overcoming the limitations stated above and the capacity to produce very quickly good cartography covering the affected area. All the aforementioned technologies, were successfully tested in field trials simulating different kinds of emergency situations.
More information at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.104180
