Abstract
Abstract. Civil protection and emergency teams work usually under very risky conditions that endanger their lives. One of the factors contributing to such risks is the lack of knowledge about their physical environment, especially when working indoors. Mapping and location indoor and outdoor technologies exist; for outdoors, very good levels of precision and accuracy may be obtained using offthe- shelf equipment; on the other side, and although good solutions for indoor environments are available, these require some extra pre-deployed infrastructure in the area to navigate, which is unacceptable in the case of emergency teams. It may be said, then, that no mature indoor + outdoor integrated solution providing the appropriate precision and accuracy for the purposes of emergency teams exist. In this paper, the assessment of a set of currently available sensors (IMUs, RGB-D cameras, GNSS receivers) and algorithms is presented to show that it is already possible to build such a solution relying on them – providing that appropriate (indoor) lightning and texture conditions exist.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONCivil protection and emergency teams working in areas affected by natural or man-made disasters - as for instance, floods, earthquakes or explosions - face challenging and risky situations that endanger their lives because of, among other reasons, the lack of knowledge about an environment, be it either indoor or outdoor, that may have changed drastically
The authors believe that it is already possible to alleviate such situations developing a system able (1) to enhance the knowledge about the environment where these teams must work by means of quickly produced, low-cost indoor and outdoor cartography, (2) to continuously track the position of the members of the team using unobtrusive, portable positioning equipment based on RGB-D (Red, Green, Blue, Depth) cameras, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers and IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensors, as well as sensor data fusion algorithms, and (3) to guarantee the communications among all the intervening components, either human or technological, by means of the deployment of an autonomous, portable communications network
The aim of this paper is to show that the technology and algorithms available nowadays are enough to build a lowcost fast 3D mapping and positioning system, designed to fulfil the needs of civil protection and emergency teams
Summary
Civil protection and emergency teams working in areas affected by natural or man-made disasters - as for instance, floods, earthquakes or explosions - face challenging and risky situations that endanger their lives because of, among other reasons, the lack of knowledge about an environment, be it either indoor or outdoor, that may have changed drastically. Outdoor mapping is nowadays routinely performed by many companies using RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System), so obtaining quickly good quality outdoor cartography should be no problem at all; even the Copernicus Emergency Management Service offers a fast mapping service for emergencies using either Sentinel imagery or RPAS with a response time of about 48 hours – (CEMS, 2015; Ajmar, 2015) providing that local regulations allow it As it happens with positioning, the problem of mapping is not so well solved when talking about indoor environments – especially when talking about areas that may have been severely affected by hazards, where part of the buildings may have collapsed. Models designed to operate inside buildings (and be resistant to blows and crashes) exist and have been successfully used for other purposes These drones, equipped with the same set of sensors that the light positioning device mentioned above, are the solution conceived by the authors to solve the problem of indoor mapping. The proposed architecture of the mapping and positioning system will be presented – ignoring, those aspects related to communications; only the mapping and positioning aspects will be taken into account
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
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 call
