IOPES, a new full-fledged approach to provide an end-to-end tracking system for emergency staff

The IOPES (Indoor-Outdoor Positioning for Emergency Staff) project aimed at developing an end-to-end solution able to provide a positioning and tracking system for emergency teams, no matter whether their members were located either outdoors or indoors or if there are available communication services. The opinion and views of experts involved in emergency response were collected to answer their requirements. Three important issues were highlighted by these experts: (1) the lack of information about the location of the members of the emergency teams, especially when operating indoors; (2) the use of cartography not recent enough to identify obstacles interfering with the operations of the aforementioned teams; (3) limitation of the TETRA communication system related to the area it covers and the low capacity of data transmission, which makes the exchange of information difficult beyond voice itself. Furthermore, the use of civil infrastructures like 3G or 4G communications should be avoided since these might not be available after a disaster occurs. This led to the identification of a series of improvements to develop: a personal, wearable, indoor & outdoor positioning system that should be integrated into an Emergency Management System to provide tracking information, the use of an ameliorated communications system overcoming the limitations stated above and the capacity to produce very quickly good cartography covering the affected area. Within the project, all technologies giving responses to that requirements were used and tested with success in field exercises simulating different kinds of emergency situations. The system encompasses the whole set of elements required to start working in an area affected by a disaster: up-to-date cartography built in very short times which facilitates the decision-making process (for instance, helping to find more suitable ways to access the area); an Emergency Management System collecting and displaying all the information relevant for such decision-making process, including the location of people or vehicles (thanks to the wearable positioning device) shown on maps that depict the terrain and the effects of the emergency; finally, everything is connected by means of an easily deployable, private communications network guaranteeing, wherever and whenever the emergency happened, that information is flowing on time.