An Indoor Positioning System for Improved Action Force Command and Disaster Management

Managing emergency situations in large buildings and underground structures could be simplified if at any time the positions of on-site emergency crews were available. In this paper a system is proposed which combines inertial measurements of moving persons with building floor plans tagged with information on semantics to achieve a novel level of robust indoor positioning. A speech driven user interface tailored for visualization on head mounted displays makes information easily available for action forces. The system is complemented with a self-configurating communication network based on novel approaches combining mobile ad hoc networks, sensor networks, and professional mobile radio systems to make the locally determined positions available to anybody on-site.