Emergency detection and response

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Safety of personnel

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To improve the safety of emergency response personnel, CSIRO is developing the Wireless Ad hoc System for Positioning (WASP) which uses low cost, portable hardware to track people and objects where traditional technologies do not work well, or even at all, such as indoors and disaster zones.

Two fire fighters with hose stand in front of flames.

CSIRO's wireless tracking technology aims to keep emergency personnel safe.

For example, fire fighters about to enter a burning building currently use a manual tag board to account for personnel. With WASP the location of anchor nodes placed outside the building is determined with GPS and the location of the fire fighters inside the building (where GPS is not available) is determined by WASP.

Combining WASP with other sensors means we are able to monitor the heart rate of emergency workers or gas levels in the surrounding environment, for example.

Read more about Wireless tracking for challenging applications.