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Every year thousands of Europeans owe their lives to the professionalism of the civil emergency services. Operating in complex situations, often with imperfect information, operators such as fire fighters, paramedics and disaster management forces make split-second decisions that can literally mean the difference between life and death. A series of trials under the IST's XMOTION project is demonstrating the use of mobile applications in emergency management so as to improve the safety and security of both the public and the emergency workers themselves.
Mobile technologies are opening up many possibilities for emergency services to access and use information in new ways. XMOTION's Project Manager Christian Mentrup explains: "Emergency logistics is an ideal application area for mobile technologies. Each of the services tends to use different networks, which need to work together. In technical terms, we call this interoperability. Plus they need to work to a high level of location accuracy, short response times and high bandwidth during peak demand. All of the technical elements needed to achieve this are available - it's a matter of putting them together and proving that it works."
XMOTION is trialling these technologies prior to their adoption by service operators. "European emergency services are quite conservative," notes Christian Mentrup. "That's understandable - they need robust, reliable solutions and can't afford for anything to go wrong. In XMOTION we're building a test bed to show the end-users the usability and benefits from these innovative services."
For instance, one of the key requirements in emergency management is for the control units to have constant contact with their operatives on the ground. Controllers need to know where operatives are, what situations they have to tackle, and where necessary support them with specialist advice. XMOTION's mobile applications, based on 2.5 and 3G networks, will allow a much richer exchange of information than the current technologies allow, and in real time.
Three trial scenarios
The trial focuses on three scenarios: emergency management, teleambulance and transport surveillance, each of which raises significant interoperability issues. Each of the trials involves at least one end-user, who provides a test bed for gathering empirical data on the performance and real-world adequacy of the diverse wireless technologies being deployed. The data collected will help demonstrate the suitability of mobile technology in safety and security-related areas.
The emergency management scenario aims to reduce the time it takes for fire fighters to respond to an emergency and to enhance their safety once on site. "Most problems fire fighters encounter are unforeseeable," says Christian Mentrup. "Therefore they have to work very flexibly and tightly with other emergency services to get all the information they need quickly and directly. For instance, our solution enables the incident commander to access information about building floor plans and stored materials via a PDA. We're also trialling wearable sensors in oxygen masks that allow the control unit to monitor the health status of individual fire fighters. Another innovation is an interactive helmet with augmented reality features, for use when handling hazardous materials, that allows the fire fighter to call up additional information directly."
Ambulance services use many different communications systems and therefore are a prime candidate for interoperability tests. Christian Mentrup explains: "The communication needs of paramedics vary greatly depending on the situation they are in. For routine calls it would be helpful for them to access a patient's medical records, so as to make a full assessment of their condition. In emergency situations they may need to transmit information on the patient's vital signs back to the hospital or to receive consulting advice from specialist doctors not available locally. All of this, and more, is possible over 3G networks." The demonstration system comprises video conferencing technologies, together with user-friendly interfaces for paramedics and doctors, and wearable monitors with digital transmitters.
In the transport surveillance application the emphasis is on security and safety in the freight transport of sensitive goods, for instance goods that are of a particularly high value or highly inflammable. "In this set-up we have one or two cameras located inside the cargo space of a transporter," says Mr Mentrup. "The cameras are activated during an emergency such as a hold-up or an accident and a video stream is transmitted via a 2.5-3G network to the surveillance centre. The communication link between the vehicle and the centre is bi-directional, so the vehicle's engine can be cut out if anything untoward happens, such as a hijacking or the vehicle leaves a predefined route."
A common infrastructure
The partners have defined a common architecture for the trials and developed four key components of the infrastructure, namely: mobile middleware, location-based services (LBS), multimedia streaming, and the mobile application backbone.
In the case of transport surveillance, for instance, the main technical challenge was to develop a reliable mechanism for video streaming over a mobile 2.5-3G network and to integrate this with LBS. LBS and Web services are also an important feature of the two other solutions. Users access the services through PDAs, tablet PCs or specialist hardy devices.
Next step...to market!
All three trials are being undertaken in Bremen, northern Germany, using the 3G network that has being installed by commercial service providers. Although the trials are still on going, and the main lessons have yet to be assessed, end-users are showing a strong interest. "The whole point of a trial is to demonstrate the system's feasibility to the market, so it's essential to have end-users involved," asserts Christian Mentrup. "The reaction so far has been very positive and we're already negotiating with local emergency services to develop the current trials into full-scale pilots."
Promoted by the IST results Service.
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