Tracking firefighters inside structures is the holy grail of accountability on a fire scene and situational awareness for the incident command staff. Makers of accountability and tracking equipment designed to track firefighters on a scene can pinpoint exterior locations of firefighters within a yard.
And, two companies have seemingly solved the puzzle of accurately locating individual firefighters working inside buildings.
Paul Couston, co-founder and chief executive officer of Ascent Integrated Tech, says Ascent’s technology solution to the problem of tracking firefighters inside structures was proven when it won first place in the First Responder Smart Tracking (FRST) competition. Led by the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab in the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University, FRST is funded by a cooperative agreement from the Public Safety Communications Research Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The competition challenged 65 companies to demonstrate their 3D tracking technology that can track first responders to less than 1-meter accuracy in three dimensions, with no predeployed infrastructure and in a variety of nonideal environments.
1 Ascent Integrated Tech’s software solution for tracking firefighters on a fire scene, including inside of buildings, is shown being used on an iPhone 15. (Photos 1-3 courtesy of Ascent Integrated Tech.)
“We used an iPhone 15 with our custom solution to accomplish that challenge,” Couston says. “The final two phases of the challenge required us to go through live burn testing, EMS and active shooter training, drop testing, heat testing, and submerging in water. We came out first in the challenge and proved to the industry that you can take off-the-shelf hardware and customize it to fit the need.”
Couston says Ascent’s software solution to indoor firefighter tracking uses the federal government’s software Team Awareness Kit (TAK) developed for the U.S. Air Force as a base platform and builds a plug-in software suite on top of TAK that customizes it for public safety. “Our software works on iPhones and Android smartphones, wearables like iWatch or smartwatches, and proprietary hardware,” he points out.
2 Ascent’s software solution can be used on smartwatches.
“It uses long-term evolution (LTE) cellular to communicate, and 99 percent of the time that works fine indoors, even in concrete basements and stairwells. But, we’ve been experimenting with subsystems, like triangulation, to get the signal out when LTE won’t. We’ve also found success in connecting to amplifiers and repeaters in a building’s existing infrastructure.”
Ascent’s custom solution introduces a new component to tracking, which is visual. “Cameras on phones can understand the environment around them and map them out, improving the ability to track the firefighter,” Couston says. Ascent’s technology has a tech stack of four main elements, he notes: GPS, which is very reliable for tracking outside a structure; an inertial measurement unit or accelerometer that tracks physical movement in the x and y axes; ultrawide band for triangulation where it relies on other devices or a fire vehicle or drops beacons; and a visual component that can simultaneously scan the environment, although its technology might have interference from smoke, darkness, or particulates.
Couston says the same tech stack and core approach used on smartphones can be used on wearables, “although we lost of bit of accuracy in transitioning from the phone to a wearable. Where the phone is accurate to 1 meter, the smartwatch has a sub- 5-meter accuracy, indicating what side of the building the firefighter is on and his altitude above the tablet reading the information. It also shows health information, such as passivity and a high heart rate, which is important data for an incident commander (IC).”
3 An IC uses Ascent’s software solution on a smart tablet to track firefighters on a scene
John Touvannas, vice president of ASTRO devices for Motorola Solutions, says Motorola offers APX smart radio applications that can help keep track of fire personnel during incidents. The Personnel Accountability app on the APX-series radio serves as a first responder’s tag, allowing ICs to identify who has responded to the scene, conduct roll calls, and issue an evacuation notification if necessary.
4 Motorola Solutions makes the SmartLocate app for its APX radio that reports a firefighter’s GPS location when outdoors and an estimated location indoors. (Photos 4-5 courtesy of Motorola Solutions.)
5 The Motorola Solutions APX smart radio runs several apps that help keep track of fire personnel during incidents.
SmartLocate, another APX application, delivers consistent GPS location data so dispatchers and ICs know firefighters’ GPS coordinates, Touvannas adds. The app integrates into Motorola Solutions’ situational awareness software, CommandCentral Aware, for precise resource deployment, unifying real-time data and video streams into a secure common operational view. He notes that SmartLocate reports firefighters’ GPS locations when they are outdoors and provides estimated indoor locations by leveraging signals from surrounding cellphone towers and WiFi access points. When an LTE signal is not available, SmartLocate can report a location over a land mobile radio signal.
6 MSA Safety’s LUNAR device tracks firefighters outside through GPS and, when a device goes into alarm, can search for it using other LUNAR devices on the scene. (Photos 6-7 courtesy of MSA Safety.)
7 A LUNAR device searching in infrared mode for an alarmed device inside a structure.
APX radios also are built with a personnel down sensor that uses an onboard accelerometer to flag if a responder is motionless or in a horizontal position for a set time so that the IC can be notified of potential distress. Touvannas says SmartIncident is Motorola’s newest APX smart application that gives frontline responders a clear, consolidated view of assignments, unit status updates, maps, floorplans, and multimedia on their radio.
Jasmine Spencer, MSA Safety’s fire service marketing manager, says MSA’s LUNAR is a handheld wireless device that keeps fire crews connected and track- able through GPS. She notes that its wireless connectivity uses long-term evolution for machines (LTE-M) for local and remote monitoring, an ad hoc network for connection between LUNAR devices, and Firefighting Assistance Search Technology (FAST) that provides distance and direction for locating a down firefighter.
Spencer points out that firefighter locations outside structures are tracked through GPS, but inside buildings, GPS doesn’t work. But, LUNAR can provide an approximate last-known location for a firefighter where entry was made into the building. If a firefighter’s LUNAR device goes into alarm mode when inside a building, all LUNAR devices are notified and firefighters can be selected to search using their LUNAR devices, Spencer says.
“FAST introduced the concept of collaborative search for quicker identification of the best entry point and search location,” she says. “Each searching device will be given: distance from the alarm, directional information, and thermal imaging. The bottom left corner is distance in feet—for example, 30, 60, 90, or more feet from the device in alarm—and the bottom middle gives the direction, which is a number between zero and 100, with 100 meaning you are pointed at the device in alarm. There also will be an indication if you are on the same floor or above or below the alarm.”
Selma Sosic, global product line manager for technology partnerships at MSA, notes that MSA’s FireGrid Map View gives a visual representation of the estimated location of all LUNAR devices on a scene. “Map View uses satellite technology to determine where a device is located and puts a pin on a map for where that LUNAR device is,” she says.
Sosic adds that using Wi-Fi could be a way forward for indoor tracking of firefighters. “Advancements have been made in that space, but we feel we need a level of comfort, certainty, and trust in the technology,” Sosic says. “We are keeping a close eye on the technology for firefighter indoor tracking.”
Tracking firefighters inside structures remains a challenge. While GPS and cellular technologies provide valuable location data outdoors, companies are continuing to develop innovative solutions to overcome limitations of indoor environments and enhance firefighter safety.
ALAN M. PETRILLO is a Tucson, Arizona- based journalist, the author of three novels and five nonfiction books, and a member of the Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment Editorial Advisory Board. He served 22 years with the Verdoy (NY) Fire Department, including in the position of chief.
