Over time, fire safety practices and measures have been established worldwide to prevent fires, mitigate their impact and safeguard lives and property. Firefighting is a hazardous occupation. Firefighters face some of the most unique challenges to save people from life-threatening situations. Emerging technologies can help – to protect lives and property, and firefighters themselves.
Smart firefighting utilises cyber-physical systems (CPS) to integrate smart sensor and computing technologies with building control systems, firefighting equipment and apparatus. By harnessing advanced IoT and data analytics, smart firefighting enables a more proactive, effective, and efficient approach to fire prevention, protection, and emergency response.
Mission-critical IoT (MC-IoT) offers a high-performance solution for gathering, processing and delivering data in real-time – and thereby improving situational awareness, predictive models and decision-making. Integrating two-way radio, broadband LTE/5G, and mesh and repeater devices further enables seamless information sharing among firefighters, incident commanders, dispatchers and other responders – across all pre-, intra-, and post-incident phases.
This article takes a comprehensive look at the tech advancements that are transforming fire services, and highlights a vision of the potential of smart firefighting. It considers the advancements in next-gen mission-critical IoT use cases and applications, and innovative solutions to enhance firefighters’ operations and improve their safety and health.
Resilient two-way radio
Voice-based radio comms is the primary method for firefighters to interact with commanders and each other. Two-way radio push-to-talk (PTT) technologies have been the foundation of tactical mission-critical (MC) comms for decades. By simply pressing the dedicated PTT button and speaking, users can swiftly send status updates or issue commands to a group of listeners without the need to wait for an immediate response.
Voice comms remains the surest way to instantly convey tactical status and commands on the scene, especially in activities involving large groups. Firefighters and other emergency responders have widely adopted this technology worldwide, as it enables clear and immediate communication in critical situations. The ability to hear the tone, urgency, and inflection in one’s voice adds an important layer of understanding.
During the last two decades, there have been significant advancements in two-way radio, particularly with the transition from analogue to digital technology. This shift has resulted in notable improvements in operational and performance characteristics, including supporting enhanced voice clarity, short data service (SDS) and optimised spectrum utilisation. The digital radio systems based on established open standards, including Tetra, DMR, PDT and P25 – collectively referred to as Private Mobile Radio (PMR) – have significantly improved radio operations, as follows:
– High resiliency, even in challenging situations, is a crucial feature of PMR systems, particularly of Tetra and PDT systems. These default to backup systems when needed, providing high availability and up-to ‘five-nines’ (99.999%) reliability. They can fall back from on- to off-network mode (direct mode), guaranteeing high availability, especially in remote environments. These features make PMR systems the de facto choice for public safety networks.
– Global standards ensure interoperability and compatibility among equipment and network providers, and facilitate broad-scale tech migration towards mission-critical broadband comms. Many large-scale incidents demonstrate the importance of real-time information sharing and seamless collaboration among agencies and jurisdictions during emergencies.
– Low-rate data comms is another important feature of digital radio systems. By integrating low-rate data applications with radio – for location tracking, man-down alerts, and monitoring of temperatures and vital signs – a mission-critical digital system enhances situational awareness and critical information sharing among all stakeholders.
– Two-way voice is the cornerstone of emergency comms, especially for firefighters, even despite the wide adoption of high-speed and low-latency cellular technologies like LTE and 5G. Its reliability, immediacy, and simplicity continue to make it an essential tool for fast communication, ensuring seamless coordination and effective response in life-threatening situations.
Two-way radio systems have undergone significant evolution to meet the demands of emergency responders. They offer robust, resilient, and interoperable capabilities for efficient and effective communication among firefighters and other parties. Furthermore, they are designed to withstand harsh environments; radios are ruggedised to enhance their durability, making them resistant to impact, vibration and extreme temperatures. They are also typically water and dust-proof.
Extended battery life prolongs their operation. Radios also support hand-free and heads-up operations for use with bulky gloves or protective gear. Intrinsically safe (IS) radios are essential for firefighting operations in explosive environments, and undergo testing and certification to ensure compliance with safety standards in such environments.
Firefighters and emergency responders rely on these purpose-built radios with tailored features and functionalities that are optimised to meet their unique operational needs and challenges during emergencies. In contrast, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices do not offer the necessary reliability, durability, and performance required by first responders, making them an unfeasible option especially for firefighters.
Mission-critical IoT
Smart fire fighting requires reliable voice and data comms, but does not rely only on voice and data any more. The ability to work with smart sensors as part of a distributed CPS (cyber-physical system) is also crucial – to enable multimedia applications, such as HD video streaming, IoT monitoring and tracking. These newer technologies hold great potential for fire services.
With the almost-ubiquitous availability of public LTE and 5G networks, next-gen push-to-talk over cellular (PTToC) and cellular-based (3GPP) push-to-anything mission-critical comms (MCX) services have reached maturity, and are widely deployed across public safety and industrial safety services. It has also meant traditional two-way radios have evolved into smart devices with multiple radios. Devices now integrate LTE capabilities alongside PMR functionalities, as standard.
They can connect to different access networks, and fall back to PMR as required – thereby maintaining the ultra-reliability of traditional PMR systems. They are now versatile platforms for PTToC/MCX apps, offering a wide array of tools to help firefighters in emergency response scenarios. Voice is the most important of these tools, and the only one for coordination in many cases, but voice is also far from perfect in fire fighting for example because of self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and noisy environments.
Broadband with higher audio fidelity can enhance speech intelligibility, adding smart and robust comms to complement two-way voice through LTE and MESH networks. The integration of IoT into public safety operations has given rise to the concept of an ‘internet of life-saving things’, offering even higher levels of protection for civilians and responders. Alongside mission-critical broadband, MC-IoT will improve how data is collected, processed, and shared, empowering agencies to make decisions based on live live data from live events.
Many solutions are available today in different forms, and new solutions are under development. The point is that traditional two-way radio systems have limitations, particularly in unfamiliar and hazardous environments. Exploring MC-IoT use cases in firefighting is crucial, focusing on applications for situational awareness and health and safety.
Robust sensor networks to safeguard firefighters
Firefighters face a myriad of challenging scenarios, including fires, explosions, gas leaks, material spills, structural collapses, and medical emergencies. To carry out their duties and protect themselves, they must wear personal protective equipment (PPE) and carry external equipment. This has prompted the development of new sensor applications to increase situational awareness – to help, particularly, with poor visibility and multiple hazards and distractions.
Biometric sensors are embedded into PPE gear to monitor body temperature, heartbeat, respiratory rate, room temperature, hazardous materials, and locations. These critical data feeds are transmitted in real-time to incident commanders and field supervisors, analysed, and displayed on heads-up displays in firefighters helmets. This enables them to issue reports and alarms about physiological and environmental conditions, as well as to view the location of individual firefighters as they move about.
A personal area network (PAN), also known as a body-area subnetwork and a local-access network (LAN), is established around firefighters and commanders on the scene. A smart device serves as a hub, connecting sensors and networks, and facilitating data management with central command. A robust system, which is able to transmit real-time critical information, can make a difference between life and death; it needs to go beyond ruggedisation and long battery-life to also incorporate multiple transmission paths to ensure stable comms in challenging environments.
This means integrating wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as PMR and LTE, and avoiding reliance on any one technology. Seamless attachment, handoff and fallback (LTE to direct mobile operation, for example) between these networks is crucial to be able to adapt to changing conditions, mitigate interference and provide uninterrupted comms in obstructed environments.
The public-safety market requires a comprehensive solution that harnesses and integrates all of these advancements – to enable reliable data transmissions, real-time monitoring, location tracking, and critical information sharing.
Multi-access critical comms
Voice communication, particularly in hands-free mode, has long been the primary method of emergency communication for firefighters, as using hands and eye contact to send and receive messages on a device is impractical during firefighting operations. However, in time-critical situations, video-as-a-sensor (VaaS) can be a powerful tool, providing invaluable visual information.
Additionally, Push-to-video (PTV) feature allows users to initiate video communication from their devices, enhancing situational awareness and facilitating better decision-making. While law enforcement often uses license plate readings and person-of-interest photo transmission, video streaming is becoming increasingly vital in firefighting operations.
En route and on the scene, it offers real-time feeds from various sources, including smart devices, CCTV, body cameras, carry-on cameras, helmet cameras, and aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), providing valuable perspectives for incident understanding. By having seamless and rapid access to this video, ICs and dispatchers can make well-informed decisions based on solidated real-time visual information, significantly enhancing situational awareness and response coordination.
Specialised video applications also offer valuable benefits to firefighters. With a helmet-mounted camera that combines standard video and thermal imaging capabilities, firefighters can swiftly identify victims and detect active fire by visually assessing their surroundings. The camera continuously transmits video data to IC, allowing for real-time visualisation of the interior conditions. This enhances verbal reporting over the radio, providing the IC and firefighters with a comprehensive understanding of the situation.
Video communication relies on high-performance network solutions for reliable and robust high-data transmission, where mesh wireless and networking technologies gain popularity. With the introduction of versatile features, such as low latency, high bandwidth, intelligent routing and MIMO, advanced MESH solutions can significantly enhance situational awareness by reliably maintaining links for data and voice by integrating and complementing two-way radio voice communication.
Converged public safety
What the public safety market wants and needs is a wireless fusion solution, which integrates a variety of wireless units such as ad-hoc repeaters, advanced MESH networks, Wi-Fi access, and easy-to-deploy LTE – which does not rely on a single technology and enables hybrid devices to hand seamlessly between networks without disturbing critical operations. It needs a command post, as well, equipped with an LTE/5G link and satellite backhaul, to enable commanders at the scene to dispatch and manage resources.
These kinds of flexible fusion solutions can quickly establish reliable network coverage in remote fields or inside structures where primary private (PMR) or public (MNO) network coverage may be limited or unavailable. By enabling critical MC-IoT applications, they can enhance situational awareness and decision-making for firefighting teams, including with the following solutions:
– Reliable repeaters ensure long-distance voice and low-data comms, and boast ruggedised IP67 rated housings, lightweight form factors (as low as 3.1kg), long battery life (nine hours, as an example), and 10-watt multi-hop relay capabilities, plus separate voice and data channels. These are ideal for all terrains and conditions.
– Cognitive broadband MESH can support 32 nodes for high-speed voice, data, and video over long distances, and packs into a diminutive carry-sized (3.5kg) and ruggedised (IP67) case. It offers aerial relay, intelligent routing, and MIMO and UL-OFDMA capabilities, and adapts to harsh emergency or complex radio environments.
– Command post, a centralised command and control platform for frontline commanders, combines dispatch, video surveillance, and GIS mapping functionalities to support unified coordination and real-time monitoring of firefighters’ health status.
– Rugged radios, designed for emergency responders, combine Tetra/DMR/PDT trunking, direct mode and LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, GPS and other positioning technologies alongside tailored features like one-button call and one-button switch, making them powerful actional tools and robust sensor hubs. Firefighters can stay connected, access fire services apps, monitor physiological changes and ensure real-time information sharing in dynamic emergencies.
Conclusion – smarter fire fighting
Smart hybrid-mode devices serve as a powerful tool through every phase of an emergency response. On-duty firefighters can receive an assignment through a hybrid mission-critical radio system, they can gather their gear and equipment, including their network systems, and go on their way. En route, seamless PTToC/MCX connectivity enables them to stay in touch with the control room, whether via a Tetra or public mobile network.
They can view the latest comments and information from dispatchers ahead of their arrival; they can receive CCTV or aerial video footage of the scene, and conduct video calls with witnesses; they can also navigate heavy traffic and unfamiliar locations using advanced mapping. On arrival, a button-press lets them switch from hybrid to DMO mode on the tactical network, facilitating local comms groups for firefighters and commanders.
Critical sensor data is transmitted to central control via redundant comms paths, ensuring firefighter safety and facilitating better decision-making. All comms and data recorded in the platform can be used in post-event analysis to improve fire response strategy and techniques. Modern smart radios with tailored features make firefighters’ tasks more effective and efficient.
In conclusion, innovative new smart technologies are crucial as firefighting faces evolving challenges and dangers. The adoption of smart firefighting practices – cyber-physical system integration, advanced communication networks, smart radios and IoT sensors – can revolutionise fire safety by enabling more efficient, effective, and coordinated responses to fire incidents and improving safety.
With them, we can strive towards a future where firefighters are better equipped to safeguard lives, protect property, and mitigate the devastating impact of fires whilst also better protecting themselves.
