Indoor Localization for Fire Safety : A brief overview of fundamentals, needs and requirements and applications

Abstract

An indoor localization system for positioning evacuating people can be anticipated to increase the chances of a safe evacuation and effective rescue intervention in case of a tunnel fire. Such a system may utilize prevalent wireless technologies, e.g., Bluetooth, RFID and Wi-Fi, which today are used to survey incoming and outgoing traffic to a certain space or location, to estimate group sizes and to measure the duration of visits during normal operation of buildings. Examples also exist of where the same wireless technologies are used for safety purposes, for example to assess real-time location, tracking and monitoring of vehicles, personnel and equipment in mining environments. However, they are relatively few, and typically rely on a high degree of control over the people that are to be tracked, and their association with (connection to) the localization system used for the tracking. In this report, the results of a brief overview of the literature within the field of indoor localization in general, and the application of indoor localization systems within the field of particularly fire safety, is summarized. This information forms the underlying basis for the planning and execution of a future field study, in which an indoor Wi-Fi localization system will be tested and evaluated in terms of if, and if so how, it can be used to position evacuating people in tunnels. Whereas such a system allows digital footprints to be collected within a wireless network infrastructure (also already existing ones), questions remains to be answered regarding aspects such as precision and accuracy, and furthermore, how these aspects are affected by other independent variables. In the end of this report, examples of research questions deemed necessary to answer in order to enable a sound evaluation of the system is presented. These need to be addressed in the future planning of the above-mentioned field study

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