Firefighter Location and Rescue Equipment (FLARE)

Details

• Personal Author:
  Schantz HG
• Description:
  Our aim was to implement and commercialize a Firefighter Location and Rescue Equipment (FLARE) system: an effective, practical, and affordable personal location and tracking system for use by first responders. By improving situational awareness at incident response scenes, our system may avoid some of the annual 100 firefighter deaths and enhance occupational safety for firefighters and other emergency responders. The FLARE system collects sequential ambient AM band signal data from broadcast stations along the route taken by a firefighter. This data provides a robust and repeatable RF fingerprint of the path. By correlating live data against the stored path data, one can tell not only if the current location is on the path, but also determine how far along the path one has progressed. An individual firefighter can employ the data for self-rescue, evacuating a building along the ingress path, or a team member can use the data to follow the path of a lost or disabled firefighter. If a pre-calibration of an indoor environment is possible, FLARE will be able to deliver absolute location data with foot-level (i.e. 30cm rms or better) accuracy. Even if calibration data are not available, FLARE will enable path routing to guide firefighters out on their entry paths or to enable rescuers to be routed to the location of a lost firefighter with foot-level accuracy. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Emergency Responders Firefighters Fires Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Emergency Responders Fire Fighters Fire Fighting First Responders Mobile Equipment Radio Waves Rescue Measures Rescue Technology
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  Alabama ; OSHA Region 4
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-17
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20058704
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2022-100289
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, R43-OH-010007, 2013 Mar; :1-17
• Contact Point Address:
  Hans G. Schantz, Q-Track Corporation, 2223 Drake Avenue SW 1st Floor, Huntsville, AL 35805
• Email:
  h.schantz@q-track.com
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2013
• NORA Priority Area:
  Services ; Public Safety
• Performing Organization:
  Q-Track Corporation, Huntsville, Alabama
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20110901
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20120529
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:5d135b1050bf16dfbaf4bad894738e6e02600de67cff1d00df24c6e6853539f9f33076fbd15d0554cdb69a4b593448ae9edfab2dbf21d535f69a12a26f2fbdb0
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/218953/cdc_218953_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.75 MB ]