Abstract
Situational awareness is a critical aspect of the decision-making process in emergency response and civil protection and requires the availability of up-to-date information on the current situation. In this context, the related research should not only encompass developing innovative single solutions for (real-time) data collection, but also on the aspect of transforming data into information so that the latter can be considered as a basis for action and decision making. Unmanned systems (UxV) as data acquisition platforms and autonomous or semi-autonomous measurement instruments have become attractive for many applications in emergency operations. This paper proposes a multipurpose situational awareness platform by exploiting advanced on-board processing capabilities and efficient computer vision, image processing, and machine learning techniques. The main pillars of the proposed platform are: (1) a modular architecture that exploits unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and terrestrial assets; (2) deployment of on-board data capturing and processing; (3) provision of geolocalized object detection and tracking events; and (4) a user-friendly operational interface for standalone deployment and seamless integration with external systems. Experimental results are provided using RGB and thermal video datasets and applying novel object detection and tracking algorithms. The results show the utility and the potential of the proposed platform, and future directions for extension and optimization are presented.
Highlights
Situational awareness is a critical aspect of the decision-making process in emergency response and civil protection, and requires the availability of up-to-date information on the current situation, e.g., on traffic infrastructure or on current location and availability of security and medical staff [1]
Three objective criteria were adopted according to the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) guidelines [58], namely completeness (CM ), correctness (CR ), and quality (Q) measures per object, given as: Completeness =
A clearer view of the area of interest, and an enhanced scene understanding, is achieved, providing more accurate and additional information. Such information can be overlaid on several georeferenced maps, in addition to contributing to external systems with fusion modules through rule-based schemes in order to be correlated with other features
Summary
Situational awareness is a critical aspect of the decision-making process in emergency response and civil protection, and requires the availability of up-to-date information on the current situation, e.g., on traffic infrastructure or on current location and availability of security and medical staff [1] In this context, the related research should encompass developing innovative single solutions for (real-time) data collection, and on the aspect of transforming data into information so that the latter can be considered as a basis for action and decision making. According to [2,3], the definition of situation awareness is: “Situation awareness is the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future”. For a navigator, parameters such as the vector extension of the target’s radar simulation provides a projected view of the basis on which it may be possible to predict a future outcome of the system state
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
