Real time localization of victims at an emergency site: Architecture, algorithms and experimentation

Abstract

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.

Escalating post-disaster rescue missions through ad-hoc victim localization exploiting Wi-Fi networks

“…Moreover, the localization accuracy is 1 m which is greater than our proposed approach. RFID based approaches [22] causes much precision loss in localization with nearly 4.137 m. Additional infrastructure and pre-calibration is also necessary.…”

A Comprehensive Survey of Emergency Communication Network and Management

“…In disaster area surveillance, after the occurrence of disaster RFID based building assessment system is proposed in [77], which helps the in-building and rescue team to get the proper knowledge of the building condition before starting any operation. RFID based building indoor area localization [78], and disaster effected victim localization [79] are discussed in details in the area localization paradigm and effective disaster area surveillance. RFID-based indoor area localization is getting popularity and attracted researcher's attraction due to the absence of GPS signal at the indoor scenarios [80].…”

A Survey on Multihop Ad Hoc Networks for Disaster Response Scenarios

“…In [46], a localization system based on RFID for indoors scenarios in emergency scenarios is presented. In the line of localization systems, in [92], the author proposes an RFID based victim localization system. In general, RFID based solutions for indoors localization is an active research topic due to the unavailability of GPS in those scenarios [93].…”