PyroGuardian: An IoT-Enabled System for Health and Location Monitoring in High-Risk Firefighting Environments
Berkay Kaplan, Buhe Li
TL;DR
PyroGuardian introduces an IoT-enabled system that streams firefighter vitals, GPS location, and orientation to an incident commander using LoRa and an Android-based PyroPortal dashboard. The architecture combines PyroHelm and PyroStrap wearables with geofencing and stress calculations to support real-time decision making in high-risk environments. A real-world demonstration with 34 firefighters provides usability and cost metrics, revealing a total of $497.21 per firefighter and a tested LoRa range of $610$ meters, with an overall UMUX-lite score of $86.8/100$. The paper discusses indoor localization gaps, data-security considerations, and potential extensions to broader first-responder domains, highlighting PyroGuardian’s practical relevance and avenues for future work.
Abstract
First responders risk their lives to reduce property damage and prevent injuries during disasters. Among first responders, firefighters work with fires in residential properties, forests, or other locations where fire occurs. We built the PyroGuardian system that uses wearable modules to transmit unit information over Long Range (LoRa) to an Android tablet. The tablet runs our application, PyroPortal, to assign each firefighter's stats, such as body temperature, heart rate, and GPS location. PyroPortal displays this information on unit dashboards, and markers on Google Maps represent the firefighter's location and the direction they are facing. These dashboards can help the incident commander (IC) make more informed decisions on mission control operations and remove specific units whose health stats, such as oximeter and pulse, passed certain thresholds. PyroGuardian completes all these tasks at an affordable cost and in an impressive maximum range between the units and IC. In addition, PyroGuardian has various application scenarios, such as law enforcement and military operations, besides firefighting. We also conducted a sample mission inside a burning building while real firefighters watched. After the demonstration, they completed a survey on system usability and PyroGuardian's potential to meet their requirements.