Credit: NIST
NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Division has awarded $8 million to the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab at Indiana University’s (IU) Pervasive Technology Institute to implement a prize competition aimed at developing indoor localization technologies that support first responders in a variety of mission types. The multi-phase challenge serves to build a community of experts in localization and public safety who can examine the potential myriad of solutions to this pressing issue. IU expects to officially launch the open competition in fall 2021.
Keeping First Responders Safe Indoors
The goal of the FR3D Prize is to demonstrate indoor localization and tracking of first responders within one-meter accuracy in a variety of buildings without any pre-deployed infrastructure, like Wi-Fi access points or Bluetooth beacons. However, this technical challenge is difficult to solve.
By Stephanie Kanowitz
Mar 10, 2021
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is testing a tool that could make it easier for the public-safety community to prototype cutting-edge analytics on streaming video.
The Analytics Container Environment (ACE), being developed to support NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Division, provides a modular framework for running containerized analytics on streaming video. Essentially, it could be used to detect footage of erupting fires, fights or other emergencies that demand swift public-safety response.
“If there’s a crowd suddenly gathering or a fight breaking out, or a person falls down for no apparent reason, those are important things you would want somebody to notice,” said James Horan, the ACE project lead. “Everybody says they have tons of cameras and nobody to watch them, so [this is] the idea of a detector being able to flag a camera and say, ‘Hey, there’s a fight starting on Camera 27. You may
Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST
What do first responders do? It’s an easy question, and I used to think I knew the answer. Firefighters put out fires; police officers enforce the law; EMS workers treat injuries; 911 operators answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders to the scene. Simple, right?
I am a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducting research focused on human-centered computing and human-computer interaction. I have worked in the field for over a decade, researching ways to help people with their real-world technology problems. My research, by nature, requires me to learn about different communities in order to assess their technological needs. For public safety, I thought I had a pretty decent grasp of the community. After all, what they do is woven into all our lives.