Towards a Mission-Critical Ambient Intelligent Fire Victims Assistance System

While various ambient computing and intelligence techniques have been used to assist human beings in different aspects of their daily lives and work, this paper investigates potential ambient intelligence support in mission-critical scenarios such as firefighting. The paper reviews state-of-the-art ubiquitous techniques and tools assisting firefighting. Based upon these great research results, the authors then report the design and implementation of an ambient intelligent fire victims assistance application. By sensing the physical environment and occupants in a fire building, the system suggests the safest and fastest route along which the building occupants could evacuate; and when escaping from the building is not possible, the system tries to calm down and inform the trapped ones an action list. The channels to convey the guide assistance include traditional lights, speakers, and occupants’ mobile phones (if existing). The empirical experiments show that ambient intelligence in such a fire response guide can help improve the egress time performance of building occupants. The presented ambient smart fire victims’ assistance system is supposed to work at an early stage of fire in a building. As a complement of existing firefighting techniques, it still faces a number of open questions to be resolved in the future.