Behind The Sound Bite: Personnel Tracking
Researchers from around the globe gathered recently at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to discuss new approaches to precision indoor personnel tracking, a complex technology that faculty at the college have been trying to master for nearly a decade. David Cyganski, a WPI professor, said that researchers are getting closer each year to their goal of tracking the real-time location of firefighters inside of a building. “The technology doesn’t yet support what needs to happen,” Cyganski said. “Once it gets there, it’ll explode.” In this edition of Behind the Sound Bite, we explore the concept of personnel tracking and what’s holding the technology back.
What is precision indoor personnel tracking?
Personnel tracking includes the methods and technology that display and track the real-time locations of people inside buildings or other spaces. The aim of researchers is to build a system that tracks with an accuracy of several feet.
Why is the technology important?
Efforts to develop personnel tracking systems began shortly after the 1999 Worcester Cold Storage warehouse fire that killed six city firefighters. Accurate personnel tracking would allow fire commanders to know exactly where firefighters are located in a burning building, which would allow for a quicker rescue, if needed, and would also allow officials to manage the positions of personnel to better search the building and fight flames.
Why is it so difficult to track a firefighter’s location?
Cyganski, who is researching human tracking, said at the conference that designing a tracking system that is accurate within a few feet is far more difficult than he originally thought it would be. One system that has been developed requires fire ladders equipped with antennae to be placed around the outside of a building, but radio signal interference in that system has hampered truly accurate readings. Researchers have also developed a tracking system that requires someone to walk through a building beforehand to set coordinates. Cyganski is working on a model that fuses the two systems.
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