A system for tracking firefighters inside buildings in three dimensions and in real-time has been successfully demonstrated and is ready to begin the final levels of testing this fall and early next year to enable industry to begin offering operational units to potential customers by late 2012, an official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) branch tells TR2.
Having already completed laboratory testing, last Friday S&T demonstrated the Geospatial Location Accountability and Navigation System for Emergency Responders (GLANSER) at a fire and rescue conference in Atlanta. Next up is performance testing in the November and December timeframe at several buildings at the campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, says Jalal Mapar, program manager at S&T’s Infrastructure Protection and Disaster Management Division.
The buildings at NIST have been “surveyed to the centimeter” so that accurate data can be collected to confirm the system is meeting performance requirements, Mapar says. “To make sure the user community is comfortable with that and that they can rely on it,” he adds.
Performance testing will be followed early next year with field testing, which will be done with several fire departments in Minneapolis and Fairfax and Prince William Counties in Northern Virginia, Mapar says. S&T is also working with the New York City Fire Department and wants to get GLANSER in the hands of some smaller fire departments as well for field testing, he says.
Performance testing will take place with pre-production or prototype units, which are expected to be ready in October. Field testing will use miniaturized units that are closer to the production version of GLANSER.
The field tests will allow DHS and potential users to know if “we are comfortable with what we are putting out,” Mapar says.
If all goes well, the specifications will be completed during 2012 to enable vendors to begin designing, producing and selling their versions of the geo-location and tracking technology to emergency responders, Mapar says.
Interoperability
A key requirement of GLANSER is the development of open interfaces so that the final systems, no matter who builds them, will be interoperable. The goal is to have non- proprietary interfaces that will be published in a “GLANSER standard,” Mapar says. “We do not want to get into another interoperable communications problem.”
To help enforce the acceptance of the open standard, Mapar says S&T will work with DHS component agencies to make sure that it gets into grant language so that the vendor community uses the standard.
So even if firefighters from different localities are in the same building, their tracking devices will communicate with the GLANSER base station belong to one of the fire department’s incident command team.
GLANSER grew out of earlier efforts by S&T to develop geo-location and tracking. L-3 Communications [LLL] developed an early version of a geo- locator and tracker that proved out the integration of the components (TR2, June 11, 2008).
The effort with L-3 helped S&T understand the various problems associated with developing and employing geo-tracking devices, what would be possible, and to develop concepts for use, Mapar says. GLANSER builds on the architecture and main components of the earlier effort and even adds additional components, including a Doppler Velocimeter, which helps improve the range accuracy of the system.
Through the development of the baseline GLANSER system, S&T has proved that some of the most complicated challenges have been solved such as multi-path, signal propagation, and component integration, Mapar says.
S&T is currently leading the GLANSER effort and is contracting with a team consisting of Honeywell [HON], Boeing‘s [BA] subsidiary Argon ST, and TRX.
GLANSER is being developed to be affordable from a life-cycle cost standpoint, Mapar says. That means getting the vendor community behind leasing-based or subscription-based business models that enable industry to make money while keeping it affordable for the user community, he says.
Location-based services are expected to be an important revenue source for industry so it is in their interest to them affordable, Mapar says.
The tracking device that will be worn by a firefighter, at least what is hoped for in the first production versions, will by two by four by six inches, Mapar says. The plan is ultimately have the device integrated into personal protection equipment.
GLANSER is part of a larger suite of units that S&T is putting together for emergency responders. Another part is the a component for tracking a responder’s vital signs and another piece is throwaway communications devices, called WISPER, which is a wireless router that enables firefighters to be able to transmit a signal out of a building.