A Situation-Aware Mobile System to Support Fire Brigades in Emergency Situations

Abstract

In a firefighter emergency mission it is essential for the members of a fire brigade to get an intelligent and reliable overview of the complete situation, presented according to the role of each member. In this paper we report on the design and development of a system to support a fire brigade on site with a set of mobile services that offers a role-based focus+context user interface. It provides the required overview over the emergency situation according to the user task and context, while life-saving information is emphasized. The implementation of a context-rule-based decision module enhances the visualization of required information. Interaction with the user interface is designed for use in the wild; which in this case comes down to providing a “fat finger” interface that allows firemen to interact with the user interface on site with his gloves on.