DIORAMA system which is using rapid information collection and accurate resource tracking can assist incident commanders in their attempt to bring order to the chaos as they direct rescue operations for Mass Casualty Incidents (MCI). This system makes use of active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to identify the location and status of the patients and responders involved in a MCI. The authors introduce DIORAMA’s hardware and software architecture as well as the trials they conducted with up to 40 human subjects. The authors show that the DIORAMA system can significantly reduce the patient’s evacuation time compared to paper triage, consequently reducing the patients’ mortality. Moreover, the evacuation completeness of the DIORAMA based evacuation is always 100% as opposed to the paper-based evacuation where a number of patients are left behind. The information provided by the DIORAMA system can improve the coordination of the response to better match supply (care providers, ambulances, medical equipment) with demand (number of patients, level of acuity).

DIORAMA is a real-time scalable decision support framework built on rapid information collection and accurate resource tracking functionalities. Using RFID technology the proposed system tracks emergency responders and victims at the disaster scene. DIORAMA improves the accuracy and decreases the time it takes rescuers to triage, treat and evacuate victims from a disaster scene, as compared to the traditional methods and process that involves using paper triage tags. The information can then be viewed from a website that shows a satellite image of the disaster area with icons representing the paramedics and victims.

Reliable tracking of people in video and recovering their identities are of great importance to video analytics applications. For outdoor applications, long range identity sensors such as active RFID can provide good coverage in a large open space, though they only provide coarse location information. We propose a probabilistic approach using noisy inputs from multiple long range identity sensors to globally associate and identify fragmented tracklets generated by video tracking algorithms. We extend a network flow based data association model to recover tracklet identity efficiently. Our approach is evaluated using five minutes of video and active RFID measurements capturing four people wearing RFID tags and a couple of passersby. Simulation is then used to evaluate performance for larger number of targets under different scenarios.

During an emergency, determining accurate location of victims is crucial for expediting rescue efforts. In this paper, we present a mass-deployable active RFID RSSI-based real time locating system to localize victims at an emergency site. The system architecture, localization algorithms and experimental results are discussed in the paper. The system includes commercial off-the-shelf active RFID readers which are rapidly deployed at known points at the emergency site. A paramedic carrying around a bag of Active RFID tags attaches a tag to each victim as a part of the triage process. Our localization algorithm processes the unreliable RSSI values reported by the above tags using techniques such as tag calibration, tag averaging, time averaging and selective trilateration to estimate the location of the tagged victims. The system was tested in a number of experimental emergency scenarios with satisfactory results. The average error in estimated position of a tagged victim in a 100 x 100 ft emergency site setting was around 12 ft.

In this paper we introduce a Mixed Reality Triage and Evacuation game, MiRTE, that is used in the development, testing and training of Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) information systems for first responders. Using the Source game engine from Valve software, MiRTE creates immersive virtual environments to simulate various incident scenarios, and enables interactions between multiple players/first responders. What distinguishes it from a pure computer simulation game is that it can interface with external mass casualty incident management systems, such as DIORAMA. The game will enable system developers to specify technical requirements of underlying technology, and test different alternatives of design. After the information system hardware and software are completed, the game can simulate various algorithms such as localization technologies, and interface with an actual user interface on PCs and Smartphones. We implemented and tested the game with the DIORAMA system.