Team Members

Name	Student number	Department
Tristan Deenen	1445782	Computer Science
Jos Garstman	145722	Mechanical Engineering
Oana Radu	1325973	Computer Science
Ruben Stoffijn	1326910	Biomedical Engineering
Daniël van Roozendaal	1467611	Medical Science & Technology

Planning

Week 4:

Start on research model (Oana and Tristan)
Forest fire and detection (Daniel)
Introduction (Ruben)
Physical requirements of the drone(Jos)
Adding interview and planning(Jos)

Week 5:

Continue on model
Finish research week 4
User requirements (Ruben)

Week 6:

Continue on model
Legal suggestions and exemptions/privacy (Licence)

Week 7:

Finish up model
Final conclusion/protocol
Final presentation

Week 8:

Finishing up Wiki page

Introduction

With dry summers becoming more and more frequent in the Netherlands, the risk of wildfires is becoming substantial. Last summer, the biggest ever national wildfire destroyed 800 hectare of Deurnese Peel. ^[1] Eventually, the fire department got the fire under control. The Dutch fire brigade is currently experimenting with drones to fight fires. With a number of drone teams already operational, the fire department is making big strides in innovation. Currently, drones are used to support teams while fighting fires or evacuating buildings. The fire department has indicated that flying drones for fire prevention would save the most resources. They are not currently doing this, mainly because of a responsibility gap involving staatsbosbeheer and the fire department.[citation needed -> interview] Since looking after national parks is the responsibility of staatsbosbeheer and the fire department are experimenting with drones, we propose a plan for cooperation. Where drones can be deployed to survey national parks during extreme drought and fire hazard. We will go over ways to automatically detect starting fires. A simulation will be performed to estimate drone response time and coverage. The drone specifications and hardware limitations will be explored. The level of feedback and control that the user will have is suggested. The legal and ethical questions regarding semi-automatic drone flight above nature reserves are addressed. All these points of attention come together to form a propositional protocol, that staatsbosbeheer can realistically use during extreme weather, given enough funding.

Problem statement and objectives

Problem statement

Firefighting is a notoriously dangerous and difficult yet important job. Civilians and firefighters still die in fires.

Objectives

How can drones be used by firefighters? (what improvements do firefighters need?)
Drone companion
- Autonomous or controlled. Ideally following teams of firefighters around
- Helps firefighters
- Has different functionalities
Find out whether using firefighter drones provides a significant advantage for firefighters (also see if there are disadvantages)

USE analysis

User

Naturally firefighters will be the main users for this project. The goal of the drone is to aid firefighters in their job, by scouting the area of the incident, giving live (IR) camerafeed from otherwise unreachable positions. If possible, the drones could also follow firefighters into burning buildings to assist the firefighters. Hence, these drones make the work of firefighters more productive and safer.

Civilians (involved) in fire accidents are the second users. Of course, if firefighters are more capable of doing their job, then these civilians have a higher chance of survival or have less damage to their house, for example.

Society

There are multiple stakeholders involved in this project. Governmental organisations, such as the EU and the national government, are the biggest stakeholder, since they control drone regulations. Furthermore, anyone who is using air space is also a stakeholder, as the drones may disturb the air space. In addition, architects may also be a stakeholder, because in the future it might be neccesary to design buildings differently to accommodate to new fire safety regulations.

Enterprise

Of course, businesses are also an important stakeholder. At this moment, there are already drone companies that produce specific drones, which fire brigades are already using. Moreover, in the Netherlands a new fire department has been set up, specifically for firefighter drones. These collabarations show that there certainly is a worthy market for companies to start developing new technologies and designs in relatively new area.

Drone Functionalities

This will change after we talk with the fire department, but for now we thought of some functionalities the drone could have:

remember the path taken/ find the optimal path
follow a firefighter/ scout the area
communicate with the people outside (live camera feed)
should not obstruct the firefighter
have a way to improve visibility inside with the smoke (maybe lights or even sounds for people to see them)
sensors (infrared, proximity, chemicals, temperature, room scan)
multiple drones with specific tasks
Carry supplies for firefighters

Sensors

We looked into some sensors the drone could have. The conclusion is that sensors can function in an ambient that has temperature max 250 degrees Celsius. Those sensors are very expensive and have a very small range.

Proximity sensors:

Balluff:
- Temperatures up to 230 degrees Celsius
- 3 versions of the sensor with range of 50mm

E2EH:
- Temperature up to 120 degrees Celsius (heat resistance verified to 1000 hours)
- Range max 12mm

ASI high temperature inductive proximity sensors:
- Different sizes, biggest one has diameter 50mm
- The range for that one is 30mm
- Temperature up to 230 degrees Celsius

Locon photoelectric high temperature:
- On the site it says temperature up to 250 degrees Celsius, but in the specifications it says only 60 degrees Celsius
- M30 has sensing distance of 2000mm

M80:
- Temperature 230 degrees Celsius
- Range 50mm

Infrared sensors:

Pyrometer optris CSmicro LT LTH:
- Temperature resistance up to 180 degrees Celsius
- Starting from 195 euro

Pyrometers optris CS LT
- Temperature resistance up to 80 degrees Celsiu
- Starting from 95 euro

Pyrometer optris CThot LT for high ambient temperatures
- Temperature resistance 250 degrees Celsius
- Starting from 590 euro

Flying in fires

WORK IN PROGRESS

Some research was done into how well drones could fly in fire hazards. unfortunately, little was found on the subject. By looking at helicopters in wildfire situations we know it is possible for copters to fly above excessive heat sources, however, it is unknown how this scales with drones in building fires. Next to the flying ability in fire, the resistance to fire is also important. The drone must be able to withstand high temperatures without losing any functionality. The same holds for flying through smoke, which can botch the electronics inside.

Hotter air is less dense than cold air. It is harder to create lift in thinner air and will result in more battery usage. This will result in additional difficulties.

http://www.i-asem.org/publication_conf/anbre17/YP.08.RR2731_4482F6.pdf

Important notes to take into consideration for the drone design from firefighter radio tests in high-temp fires:

Thermal Class 1: A maximum temperature of 100℃ (212℉). The test lasted 25 minutes and the radio did not work after the test. Following a cool down time, the radio started to transmit and receive.

Thermal Class 2: A maximum temperature of 160℃ (320℉). The test lasted 15 minutes but after only 8.5 minutes the radios went dead or suffered significant performance problems from transmission and reception shutdown to signal degradation or fluctuation and did not recover after a cool down period.

Thermal Class 3: A maximum temperature of 260℃ (500℉). In this class portable radios inside pockets of firefighter turnout gear were tested. The radios protected in pockets survived but exposed cords, speakers and microphones did not, effectively limiting the radios to Thermal Class 2 electronics.

“Firefighters sometimes find themselves fighting blazes in temperatures as high as 500 degrees F (260 degrees C).” This means 260℃ is supposedly the maximum temperature firefighters have to withstand.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2006/09/firefighter-radios-may-fail-during-high-temp-fires#:~:text=The%20NIST%20fire%20engineers%20tested,of%20212%20degrees%20F%20

Heat resistance

A study by W.C. Myeong and K.Y. Jung on the development of a fire-proof drone^{[citation needed]}(add reference, do not understand how this works yet) suggest the use of an aramid fiber as fire resistant material in combination with an air buffer layer for further insulation. The aramid fibre, also known as BPO, has exceptional fire resistant qualities. The fiber is heat resistant till temperatures up to 550 ^oC.^{[citation needed]} At temperatures above 500 ^oC the material starts to lose weight ver slowly. This is hardly relevant for us since the temperatures the fibre will have to endure will be 260 ^oC at maximum. PBO would however need several layers to protect the electronics inside the drone. Due to the limited weight the drone can carry the use of an air buffer is suggested by the previous mentioned paper. This air buffer is used to circulate cool air through the system and protect the electrical components.

The electrical components inside are not the only parts that have to be heat resistant. The propellers also have to be flame retardant and heat resistant. Rotor blades are the parts that are frequently damaged and are therefore often made from thermoplastics to reduce the cost. However, the main property of a thermoplast is that they soften when heated, a property we definitely do not want. Another material often used is carbon fiber or carbon fiber-reinforced composites. These materials are relatively more expensive, but also come with better mechanical properties such as tensile strength and heat resistance.

Interview with the fire department

The interview is scheduled to be on March 2nd. We will update this part after the interview

Questions for fire department:

-Could you explain what exactly your role is in the fire department and what you do most days at work?

-What do you feel is the biggest problem faced in fire fighting nowadays? What could have the biggest impact on the speed with which fire can be controlled and extinguished?

-What roles do you think drones could possibly take over?

-Do you believe that drones could be used to actually douse fires?

-What is your experience with drones with fire fighting and what is your view on the usage of drones?

-If specialized drones could be at a fire site faster than a firetruck, what would be the most useful thing a drone could do as preparation for the arrival of the fire department?

-Have you considered any alternative technologies than drones? What are your conclusions regarding these alternatives?

-When do you think (firefighting) drones will be commonly used by firefighters?

-Do you think a companion drone would be useful (a drone that follows firefighters around and has a few tasks to improve safety and help firefighters with their jobs)? If yes, what feature should it have? What would be the most helpful for you?

-Have the rules for the fire department changed with respect to drones, since the recent european regulations? (31 december 2020)

-Are drones possible in the fire department practically? Is there a budget for it and is it possible to have enough people on this?

transcript

“What are your roles in the fire department?"

Mark: We focus mostly on the outside world. Especially flying preventively. For example, above nature reserves. In the case that happens, the drone can aid you, because the drone can provide more information from above, such as: how are the buildings placed in relation to each other, where are the vehicles, where is the smoke going, are there any people on sight, are there any dangerous chemicals etc.. In that way, a drone offers the 3D perspective that a ground team does not have.

“What do you feel is the biggest problem faced in fire fighting nowadays? What could have the biggest impact on the speed with which fire can be controlled and extinguished?”

Paul: For that I have a question for you. What do you exactly want to achieve? In the Netherlands there are 25 different fire departments and some of them already work with drones. There is also a national drone organization for the fire department, so we already know how to use drones.

“Our plan for now is to find out how drones are currently used and if we could invent a new way to use drones or to improve upon an existing method. We don’t think that drones are capable enough for dousing fires. We are focusing on communication via drones and the 3D perspective that drones offer.”

Paul: Actually, in China and Dubai there are drones that are capable of dousing fires. These drones are of course much bigger and heavier up til 60 or 100 meters high. There are also different ways of using water to douse fires. 10 or 15 years ago a system I think was called ‘3FX’ was created where a helicopter fired a very quick burst of water on a fire. But one could use chemicals to douse fires, or maybe even with sounds. So almost literally, the sky is the limit. It is more a matter of: who is going to design this and who is going to pay for this? In the Netherlands this will probably happen not so fast, since in the Netherlands less money is spent on the fire brigade than in Dubai, for example.

Mark: For basic operations, we already have enough materials to deal with those. For us this is more about the escalation incidents. At this moment, we use drones primarily for gathering information at the place of interest, so that we can create a full picture of what is happening there. Though you would rather want to act at the beginning of the chain; preventing the incident from even happening. So very rapidly being able to detect a starting fire in the aforementioned nature reserve, for example. I think that we can gain the most in this aspect.

“That is indeed a new idea. We can definitely work with that.”

Paul: Also, the Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch governmental organization for infrastructure and such) uses drones for checking the quality of dykes or letting a drone check the quality of the air near factories. Again, the potentials are limitless. It is just a matter of how money you want to put in it.

“Alright. Because of extreme heat and smoke in a burning building, a thermal camera would probably be overloaded to function properly. But imagine that such a camera does exist. Do you think that this will help with the communication between firefighters that are already inside the building and the ones that are still outside? What interesting things could then be seen?”

Paul: Currently, there are remotely controlled drones with a camera attached that already can go inside buildings. We are also working on drones equipped with measuring equipment to measure the concentration of gasses in the air.

“Drones cannot get inside a burning building easily in general. What can drones do before the actual firefighters arrive at the incident?”

Paul: I’ve noticed that you have said a few times now that certain things are not possible. But actually a lot of these things áre possible. A drone can fly into a building. One only needs to design doors that can automatically be used, by sending signals between the door and the drone. We are also working with another team from the TU where we are creating drones that can escort people safely outside buildings.

“Are you concerned with legal restrictions on drones? Obviously firefighters have to follow different rules than recreational pilots. When a new drone is available, can you use it immediately? “

Paul: Of course we can use a drone if it’s legal. If it’s illegal we can’t use it. There are rules in place. In fact, the invitation for the training of new drone pilots for the fire department is open at the moment. If you have the proper training and licence you can start flying drones. In a few areas we cannot use drones at the moment right Mark?

“If drones were to be used, you would need a specialised team. Is this something that is already done? Are you looking for pilots at the moment?

Mark: We already have a few drone teams active at the moment, with flying licenses. These people followed pilot training for drones. As well as the supporting team, they are self supported. And for every incident they can be deployed. So regarding your question, drone teams are already active in the Netherlands.

“I had a question about when drones could be actually used, but it seems that they already are. Are there other alternative methods, apart from drones, that are currently being looked at or tested?”

Mark: Those would be dousing robots and such. Those are currently being researched. Multiple regions already have them, and are testing with them. But drones can also be used for other purposes, like personal transport. The ministry of defence is currently looking into this. You could hang a patient from a brancard under a drone. So you can secure people from heights quicker. But there are also robots you could use for salvage, transporting materials in impassable terrain, those sorts of applications.

“Regarding the drones that are already being used for entering buildings: Are these drones capable of recognising people in distress? How would that work?

Mark: Drones can already do this with a thermal camera. These can thermally distinguish the environment from victims.

“Wouldn’t the camera be overwhelmed by the heat of the environment?”

Mark: Yes indeed, these temperatures, especially in burning buildings with a substantial fire, are radiated everywhere. With thermal cameras you can ask for different thermal images. So you have images with colour or greyscale. When looking at a colour image, everything would look red, so you cannot make sense of it. But when working with greyscale, you can still distinguish persons.

“We imagine that flying close to fires can cause major problems for drones, like melting propellors or dysfunctioning equipment. How is this currently worked around?”

Paul: It depends on what you want to do with the drone. At the moment, it is not a priority to fly the drone directly at the fire. We use these drones to spot people. Or, in early stages, escort people outside. When it comes to dousing, we would rather use a dousing robot (with a camera and hose) than a drone. Drones that are used right now, are not capable of flying through fires. But this is not necessary. We are using them to see where the fire is and what the best plan of action is for extinguishing. They are namely deployed in spaces that are too dangerous to enter, like a big lobby. We can use the zoom function on the cameras to look at the fire closely, and we can estimate distances (by using lidar or radar). So by keeping drones at a distance, there is no need for a heat shield that can withstand 800 degrees. It depends on the drone’s purpose. Right now, we cannot see why a drone would need to fly through fire.

“What are typical temperatures firefighters need to deal with?”

Mark: That is a difficult question, it depends on what is burning etc. A big fire would be 1000 to 1500 degrees. Paul: Of course, we don’t send people in with these kinds of temperatures. Typical temperatures that we can still send teams into would not be 1000 degrees. Mark: Typically we are present when there is a flash-over. With lots of smoke, where everything in the room starts burning. This is typically around 600 degrees. This is still too high, when people are present at these temperatures, we are doing something wrong. So our maximum temperature would be 500 degrees. ...At the ceiling, lower to the ground the temperature is lower.

Daniel: These were all the questions we had come up with, maybe Ruben or Tristan came up with any questions?

Ruben: Since European rules came into effect since this year whether something has changed for you or if you have an exemption when it comes to the use of drones?

Paul: I don't know what the impact of European regulations is, but of course we have to comply with the regulations, which is why our pilots are specially trained. I do not know what the substantive changes are, but we are complying with the laws and regulations. We are working with the legislator to see when we can get an exemption. We do it not for fun but for a social dilemma. And then it seems logical to me that you look together with the legislator when you can get exemption, you must of course be strict. When you fly over an audience, I understand that of course you have to be strict with that. But it is something else if you want to work with a drone on public safety, for example if you are going to fly above riots it is something different than if you are going to fly above an audience at an event in your spare time to make beautiful film images. Of course we will look at where we can get exemption, but we do have to deal with the laws and regulations. My counter-question remains what you want to achieve with this investigation. I say this because we already do a lot with drones in the fire department and it would be nice if you would do additional research and not, so to speak, spend a lot of time in a report and that Mark and I say "yes but, we already have that in Twente, in Twente a drone is already going to leave automatically in case of a fire report. And I already have Utrecht and there it already is" because then you have a report that we say "yes, this may be nice but that doesn't make us any wiser and you might not be any wiser yourselves eventually." Hence, my counter-question about what exactly do you want to achieve with your research.

Daniel: We've already done some research into what kind of drones are used in the fire department but we haven't been able to find much of it and from what I'm hearing now I think we need to look even deeper. But as far as we have found there are only a few drone teams in the Netherlands, I thought we had seen somewhere that there are only 7. I do not know whether we can find exactly to what extent they are now being used, how much information we can find about them. Until now, our plan was to see if we could come up with an innovation and of course we needed more knowledge of what is now being used in the fire department.

Paul: No, I get that. Then it is easiest for you to talk to the national coordinator, Mark Bogdan, Via the website brandweer.nl you can certainly find it. He can tell you all about it. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around what you could deliver right now, and this is what I mean positively and I mean it mostly realistically.

Daniel: Yes, we understand that. We do not yet know exactly what we want to do and that we still have to do a lot of literary research ourselves.

Mark: What you notice, is that a lot is being put into a piece of exploration and extinguishing with all kinds of systems at the moment. But I think most of the profits can be made, and Paul and I have been in the field for that before, right at the front of the chain. So being able to signal it very quickly and get the profit there. That is also the most difficult thing at the same time. Prevention. We've also been talking to the Department of Defense about it. They want to use these systems in war zones to take over the tasks of patrols. Patrolling, so to speak. And being able to signal about hostilities in time or things like that and immediately respond to that. In fact, the same task could also lie with the fire department, only from a different capacity. So if you already know that you have risk areas somewhere, which Paul just described, and you can fly a drone over there in a certain time and it can send signals immediately to report it to the fire department which saves us a bit of alarm time, road time and deployment right away, which prevents those escalation fires. I think there's a lot of profit to be made there, but it's also the hard part about the story.

Ruben: To what extent is that already being done, flying for prevention?

Mark: I don't think the fire department does it. But there will be other parties that do do something like this preventively, for example, think about events with crowd management where they can just fly a drone above. If somewhere a disturbance is found and a signal is sent, they can immediately send people. You're faster with that than if you constantly have to send teams into the field to keep up. Just something comes to mind. So I think for example an event industry, those kinds of parties that work are already thinking along. Police might already be.

Ruben: By risk areas you mean, for example, nature reserves when it is very dry and warm. Also in urban areas it could also be flown on prevention or, is that a lot more difficult?

Mark: Yes, when you talk about buildings, of course it becomes a lot more difficult, because then you’re talking about systems that can look through something. But then the question is whether that task is for us or whether that task should not be invested with another party. Paul: And that's the question anyway. In Oost 5, in the east of the Netherlands, a project is being worked on to achieve autonomous nature fire exploration, that a drone just flies around there itself. The question is also, is that the responsibility of the fire department or is that the responsibility of the owners. And often it is the responsibility of the owners. Also for the railway sector, then should not be a drone of the fire department flying above to look for leaks, there would be mainly ProRail or something, having to invest in a system that discovers that something is going on there. When it comes to natural fires, the Staatsbosbeheer has to do so. This applies, of course, to all parties. In this sense, we mainly see drones as a tool that we can bring along or can send in advance when we are notified, but building owners or owners of areas etc., they can mainly use drones from the preventive atmosphere. If you look at a port area with a container storage area, it would make sense if [the owners] are the ones who mainly look at whether containers are leaking or if there may be people crawling in or out who do not belong, either human trafficking or crime. So we are also talking about that than, for example, the fire department or the police should do so or, if mainly the owner is primarily responsible for safety and surveillance and crime. And that also applies to event organization, event organizations are, of course, also primarily responsible for ensuring that an event goes well. So they will primarily have to use the drones to see ‘how am I going to make sure everything goes safely’. Because now you already have to, as Mark just said, you have to make people walk around for that now, but you can also use such a drone. Well, that's also possible at a trainway complex, you can put all kinds of gadgets on the ground there, you can also fly a drone around but keeping in mind that as owner he is responsible of course for ensuring safety and preventing nuisance. And if that goes wrong, then the emergency services like us come mainly to contain the emergency, because the prevention is of course primarily up to the owner.

European drone regulations

Since December 31 2020, the Netherlands follow European drone regulations. These new regulations divide drones in 3 separate categories: Open/zero, specific and certified. Normal consumer or hobby drones usually fall in the open category. These drones have a few restrictions:

Maximum weight: 25 kg (at takeoff)
Maximum height: 120 meters
No transporting hazardous material
No dropping materials
Always have visual line of sight

There are subclasses for the first category, depending on the weight of the drone. Most relevant is subcategory A3 which concerns drones from 2kg – 25kg. With normal regulations this category cannot fly 150 meters near any living, trade, industry or recreational zones.

The next category, specific concerns flights that:

May be near people
May fly near airports
May have a weight above 25kg
May fly in inhabited environment
May fly above a height of 120 meters
May drop materials
May fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)

Drones deployed by the Dutch fire brigade fall under the specific category. Obtaining authorization for flight needs to be done at the national aviation authority. On the national website of the Dutch fire brigade (https://www.brandweer.nl/ons-werk/drones-bij-de-brandweer/meer-over-drones/brandweer-nederland-krijgt-eigen-luchtvaartorganisatie) It is stated that they are getting their own flight organization, perhaps regulations are more lenient or authorization is more quickly granted this way. (((LOOK INTO THIS)))

Dutch fire brigade has unique exemption from specific drone laws: https://www.brandweer.nl/media/9028/stcrt-2018-33332.pdf

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/drone/nieuwe-regels-drones

https://www.easa.europa.eu/domains/civil-drones-rpas/specific-category-civil-drones

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/documenten/kamerstukken/2018/05/28/voortgangsbrief-drones/voortgangsbrief-drones.pdf

Drone state-of-the-art

A company named DJI Enterprise currently produces drones that firefighters in the USA use. Namely, the Mavic 2 enterprise advanced is used. These drones mainly help with urban fires, wildfires, and HazMat Operations. For urban fires, they help by:

Fly over buildings and obstacles, and see through smoke with thermal cameras to help prioritize targets
Stream live video intelligence back to command centers to align teams and eliminate uncertainty
Leverage high-resolution cameras to remotely monitor remaining threats and document damage for future analysis

https://www.dji.com/nl/mavic-2-enterprise-advanced

Another company named Parrot produces a drone named ANAFI Thermal. This professional drone also offers a high quality thermal camera that could potentially be used by firefighters. Details about the drone's features: https://www.parrot.com/assets/s3fs-public/2020-07/bd_anafi_thermal_product-sheet_02_a4_2019_04_10-1.pdf

Both of these drones are pretty similar, and are also used in similar ways. Because of their great mobility, these drones offer live feeds via great vantage points. Furthermore, they can instantly swap from a normal camera to a thermal camera, offering vital information that would otherwise be hard to detect. Drones are not really used for going inside though. For now, they are just Mostly equipped with lots of cameras and other sensors to quickly collect as much data as possible. One bottleneck is that operators of the drones need an ample supply of batteries. Also, these drones function to a temparture up to around 40 degrees Celsius, which is not enough for buildings on firem

Papers

Evaluation of a sensor system for detecting humans trapped under rubble: a pilot study

In this paper, a sensor system for human rescue including three different types of sensors, a CO2 sensor, a thermal camera, and a microphone, is proposed. The performance of this system in detecting living victims under the rubble has been tested in a high-fidelity simulated disaster area.

CO2 sensor is useful to effectively reduce the possible concerned area.

The thermal camera can confirm the correct position of the victim.

The use of microphones in connection with other sensors would be of great benefit for the detection of casualties.

An algorithm to recognize voices or suspected human noise under rubble has also been developed and tested.

Currently, rescue teams use life detection systems mainly based on microphones, optical/thermal cameras, and Doppler radar.

Audio signal analysis is an effective method to detect humans trapped under rubble, and some systems are already commercially available, such as the Acoustic Life Detector, which is based on audio signal processing to identify victims’ low-frequency sounds.

Microphones become less accurate in the case of high background noise such as pneumatic drills, breakers, vehicles, wind, power cables, and water flows that can be present in a real scenario.

Another limitation of audio detection systems is that they cannot locate unconscious victims.

Even though cameras are an efficient method to detect casualties, their effectiveness is limited by their inherent reduced angle of view, the presence of obstacles, and the generally limited visibility under the rubble.

Doppler radar has been widely used in disaster rescue operations due to its efficiency in detecting motion behind obstacles.

Frequency or phase shift in a reflected radar signal can be used to detect motions of only a few millimeters such as heartbeat or breathing.

Doppler radar requires accurate calibration and even small environmental changes due to aftershocks and structural instability have a negative impact on the performance of this kind of system.

In extremely noisy environments the detection of feeble sounds will not be possible.

The correct voice recognition rate is 89.36% in a noisy environment. The correct classification rate for human-related suspect noise, including scratching and coughing, is 93.85%. Therefore, using a microphone in connection with other sensors would be beneficial for the detection of casualties.

Conclusion

A CO2 sensor can provide useful information to locate a casualty, but an O2 sensor does not
A voice recognition algorithm based on SVM was also tested and from the results obtained it was confirmed that using the microphone would be of great benefit in the detection of casualties.
The gas sensor is difficult to use in open spaces due to stronger airflow affecting the CO2 concentration
A sensor system using only a thermal camera is not robust because some areas cannot be directly accessed using a telescopic pole or directly observed due to the presence of obstacles.

Use of Fire-Extinguishing Balls for a Conceptual System of Drone-Assisted Wildfire Fighting

This paper gives the suggestion of using extinguishing balls for fighting wildfires. The paper concludes that these balls cannot be used by drones for fighting building fires however. They also give an elaborate design for releasing the balls and drone specifications

https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/3/1/17/htm

https://www.brandweer.nl/ons-werk/drones-bij-de-brandweer

Current state of drones in the fire departments in the Netherlands. Mostly used for their camera’s and heat sensors. The fire department now has its own flight department, which makes the regulations for the fire department less strict.

Top 3 Tactical Changes from Firefighter Research

Basic firefighting tactics involve limiting airflow through the fire site. Ventilation was believed to help reduce smoke and heat but turned out to have dangerous effects. A lot of airflow can lead to more oxygen fed into the fire and an increase in the amount of smoke inside. Controlling the airflow before the fire can either decrease or increase the dangers and is very difficult to do and should only be done when the effects are proven to work. The three critical steps described here are confining the airflow to the fire, cooling the fire department and clearing the remaining smoke and heat.

With this knowledge, drones could be specialized to detect where airflow is caused from a different point of view from human level. Heat sensors can see where the heat is escaping a building the most, this place is causing the airflow.

https://www.fireengineering.com/health-safety/top-3-tactical-changes-from-firefighter-research/#gref

Top 20 Tactical Considerations from Firefighter Research

“No amount of technology is going to replace the need for you to know your profession”. Drones should never try to act as a replacement. Drone designers need input from specialists in the field of firefighting.

This source is probably from a safety presentation. Most information is not on these slides but the basic rules are described. Here they talk more about ventilation with which drones could help in the previous mentioned way. Also, safe positions for firefighters is explained. Drones could help the firefighters to better see where they are safe or not with e.g. a top view or other perspectives.

https://nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Membership/member-sections/Metro-Chiefs/Urban-Fire-Forum/2014/S-Kerber-NFPAUFF--Top-20.ashx

Cancer Is the Biggest Killer of America's Firefighters

The danger that kills most firefighters these days is cancer. Not an obvious main cause but the amount of asbestos in the past and other chemicals found in buildings these days is the real danger.

Drones obviously can’t prevent these long term safety issues for the firefighters but they can help in some way. Drones could be used before firefighters went inside a building to measure the toxicity of the air. With this knowledge, the tactics of the firefighters could be changed before entering. The drones would be a safer option to go inside quickly, maybe even before the firefighters have put on their gear and arrived to the site of the fire with the firetruck.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/cancer-biggest-killer-america-s-firefighters-n813411

Tristan's Father firefightering experience

Has had the full training and certifications.
Has had one actual building fire experience, though he was working in the building when the fire started, so he only helped with evacuating people in the initial phase.
Doesn’t think that drones specifically made for firefighting are good.
Rather, drones that scan areas for gas, temperatures, size etc. and that carry supplies such as oxygen are better.
Explained the duo team setup when going into buildings:
- One leader, one follower that makes sure there is always a way out.
- Possibly multiple teams in one building.
- Main goal: find other people and animals and bring them to safety.
- Once in a while, stamp really loud followed by shouting “Is someone here?”.
- This has the following benefits:
  - People might hear and might say something back.
  - You know if the floor is sturdy enough.
  - By the echo you might be able to deduce some other properties of the room.
- Leave everything exactly as it was when passing through the building. Essential for your and other team’s backtracking.
- In his time, there was only 20 minutes of oxygen available (probably now there is more). After 10 minutes, the mask makes an annoying sound that becomes louder while your oxygen supply is getting lower.
Other duo’s focus on using fire hoses, obtaining more water, securing the area etc..
Also told story where a very experienced firefighter failed a training and he would have died were it not a training. The man was so psychologically struck that he immediately quit being a firefighter forever.

Drone Swarms in Forest Firefighting: A Local Development CaseStudy of Multi-Level Human-Swarm Interaction

Paper is about drones deployed by firefighters for forest fires. The writers have created a workshop for firefighters where they are given a map with a forest fire somewhere. Then the firefighters have to describe how they would combat the fires with the help of drones.

1 More drones require more mental workload. Eventually the user cannot cope with the system anymore. A promising approach is to control the group as a whole, independent of the group size. Benefits are that the swarm is scalable and decentralized organization makes it robust when individual drones fail as the swarm adapts to find a new way to achieve its goal. Lastly, it is cost-effective because its simplicity enables (comparatively) cheap individual components to perform the same functional task as a single complex, expensive drone.

1.1 Drones are effectively used as scouts to find and provide information about fires.

1.2 Information about why there is not a lot of research on these kinds of topics and what type of research this paper is about. No real substantial information here.

2 Describes how workshops were set up where firefighters (some had more than1 year of firefighting drone experience) would utilize their drones to combat a forest fire in a rural area. This was done by giving the participants a map of the area and cubes that represented the items such as drones, firetrucks or whatever the participants needed. Notes were taken based on the participant’s scenario descriptions and how they interacted with the drones.

3.1 If drones are allowed on site, they firstly scout the whole area to measure the fire, look for terrain features such as water sources, natural barriers, buildings and roads. Then the firefighters make an estimate on how the fire will spread. After that, the drone keeps an overhead view of the site, such that possibly another commander can overview the operation. Firefighters can also use the drone as a (moving) guide through the flames. Other than that, drones also scan the surrounding area for additional fires. Drones generally only update their overview every 10-15 minutes to conserve energy.

3.2 The envisioned use of drones to detect wildfires describes two scenarios: First, when an emergency call is made, a very fast drone is immediately sent to the fire to get an overview of the situation and gather important data. Second, one could use a swarm survey to survey high-risk areas. The swarm would fan out to form a straight line, several kilometers in length, and systematically sweep the selected area for fires, using both visual spectrum and IR sensors. Whenever a drone identifies a potential fire it brings in additional drones to verify the sighting, with the rest of the swarm reorganizing to close the gaps left by the drones that have now stayed behind. When ground units arrive, tasks described in 3.1 are executed for the drones.

Furthermore, large helicopter-like drones could be used to carry lots of water to douse the fire themselves. These drones could also be equipped with loudspeakers to instruct people to evacuate.

3.3 Best to read the whole section

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Jens-Alfredson-30466080

Analysis and design of human-robot swarm interaction in firefighting

The paper discusses possible forms of interactions with swarm robotics being examined in the GUARDIANS[1] project. The paper addresses the use of assistive swarm robotics to support firefighters with navigation and search operations. It reports on existing firefighters operations and how human swarm interactions are to be used during such operations.

1 The paper focuses on employing the swarm as an aid to firefighters once they engage with the fire incident. There are two types of users involved in this situation. First, users remotely overseeing and managing operations in real-time. These users provide decision making support to the operations commanders. Second, users that are directly in the field and fully equipped.

The work reported in this paper assumes that the robots are capable of extracting required information from the environment, as well as be able to navigate. More information about the robots that were used can be found at the end of section 1.

2A. The emergency setting environment for the project is a large single story industrial warehouse. Being blinded by smokes and fumes is one of the largest risks firefighters have. Furthermore, in an area such as this, there are tons of unknown variables, such as a simultaneous ignition of all the combustible material in the area or a sudden release of toxic gases.

2B Describes the procedure that firefighters use when fighting a fire. Procedure is basically the same as described in procedure my father told me.

3A During intervention-oriented missions, such as those of rescue teams and armed SWAT-teams, a considerable amount of communication is devoted to clarifying positional information like confirming the position of specific agents. Moreover, firefighters operate in conditions, such as poor visibility, noisy environment and a thick clothing gear, which restrict their senses, and thus their communication abilities. Also, wireless communication may easily be disturbed due to metallic structures inside the incident area.

3B Firefighters are already experiencing enough stress as it is with their tasks. Making an unclear interface would only add up to the workload firefighters experience. ‘Alternative’ means are currently being investigated.

3C Firefighters only have a short time window to make their decisions on site. As a consequence, it is imperative that acquired information and data allow firefighters and human operators at the base station to comprehend in real time the on-going situation, and accordingly to best perform decision making.

3D In designing interfaces, it is important to take into consideration the roles assigned to humans and robots. For humans, different roles have different expectations or models of the robots. If these differ from reality, this will lead to frustration, additional stress, and possibly serious or critical mistakes.

3E Although simulations may be helpful, operational robot swarms will be required to assess the adequacy and efficiency of the interfaces developed.

4 The authors used prototypes to assess what firefighters think and how they interact with their ideas.

4A The auhtors expect that firefighters will have two roles during operation: team mates or bystander. Team mates will actively cooperate with the robot swarm in achieving the goal, such as scouting the incident area or searching for victims. By-standers do not have direct control over the robot swarm.

4B The GUARDIANS base station shall provide classical robot station features such as mission authoring tools, mission execution monitoring and control means, interface to robots and human crew members, and mission data recording. This will allow for the following roles:

Base station coordinator: responsible for preparing and validating mission plans, coordinating the activities of operators, robots, human crew members and sensor data specialists, taking decisions in the scope of the GUARDIANS appliance activities and is an interface from and toward the commanding chain above the GUARDIANS appliance.

Operators: They have the means and clearance to teleoperate robots, groups of robots and humans crew members. Sensor data specialists: they observe and analyse sensor data and accordingly provide advice and reports to the appliance coordinator. Stakeholder in the commanding chain: They take general purpose decisions regarding the GUARDIANS appliance activities, that the base station coordinator shall apply accordingly.

4C Through consultation and interviews the following activities have been proposed as ways in a robot swarm may assist firefighters. Notifying the firefighters of possible hazards (e.g. obstacles, high temperature, chemicals); Indicating unambiguously the direction to the scene of incident or backwards to the exit point; Grouping - it is important for firefighters that the swarm stays within a relatively close range to them but also maintains its distance to the firefighters to allow them freedom of action

5A Passive: Robots adapt to the movement of the firefighters. Drones have special gear that allows them to see the surrounding area despite the poor visibility firefighters have. They should also be able to specifically see the firefighters, perhaps they can be equipped with electronic sensors.

Tangible: In general the same as passive, however firefighters may now give specific tasks for the robot swarm. In order to do this, a minimalistic interface will have to be developed that will not bother the firefighters in any other way.

Movement-Based: A movement language could enable an easy means of communication with the swarm while being diverse enough to cater to most needs.

5B Tactile: A tactile interface consisting of eight tactors will be attached to the firefighters torso. The interface displays a “tactile picture” of possible hazards locations surrounding firefighters. Both parameters of the frequency and amplitude will be used to communicate the seriousness of hazards.

Visual: The swarm communicates unambiguous directions through a novel visual device (can be seen in paper) to be installed within the firefighters’ helmet. The visual device displays the directions in a simple form which requires minimum attention from firefighters in order to understand them.

5C Another option would be remote interaction via a base station. The crew that control the swarm from the base station then have a real time overall situational awareness, such that other firefighters can be more efficient. Further, the base station could give clear instruction to the men on site. Exact details on how this would be built can be found in the paper. Two types of configurations are considered.

Remote human - robot swarm interaction: The principle of a robot swarm is to rely on auto-organization and group behavior emergence to fulfill tasks, while benefiting from redundancy. Visualization of the swarm activity in the base station is an essential issue: efficiently encompassing the overall robots activities in a single view is a major aim for the GUARDIANS’ base station. During normal operations, robots operate autonomously. However there are situations in which autonomy level adjustment is deemed necessary. For example, when the challange is too complex for a robot or requires more knowledge than the swarm has. This makes the swarm more flexible and creates a nice balance of the workload among humans and robots.

Remote human - human crew members interaction: This allows the base station to also telecommunicate with firefighters. The main benefit is the possibility to coordinate robots and humans activities on the fields together, in a comparable way. Sometimes firefighters face conditions where visibility is null and ambient noise makes it impossible to discuss with other crew members. In such a situation, the base station can send simple step by step elementary actions requests through the designed user interface, for instance to guide the firefighter toward the exit.

[1]: GUARDIANS (Group of Unmaned Assistant Robots Deployed In Aggressive Navigation by Scent) is an European project developing and applying the concept of autonomous robots in urban search and rescue operations. Specifically the project is focused upon assisting humans involved in searchand-rescue emergencies and also employing robot mounted sensors to provide a heightened level of feedback in such settings.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4363364_Analysis_and_design_of_human-robot_swarm_interaction_in_firefighting

How Firefighters Can Better Manage Emergency Situations Using Drones

Talks about what drones are currently used for in firefighting and some challenges. From a company that creates software for use of firefighting drones. Drones are mainly used for surveillance and search and rescue.

https://flytnow.com/drone-fire-fighting/

A Survey on Robotic Technologies for Forest Firefighting: Applying Drone Swarms to Improve Firefighters’ Efficiency and Safety

Very recent paper on forest firefighting in Spain. Survey of firefighters asking on current problems in their line of work. Main need is information. Aerial view and Thermal cameras. Also proposes drone swarm concept for surveillance, mapping, monitoring etc.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/1/363/pdf

Use of drones for firefighting operations

Danish Master Thesis on Firefighting drones. 89 pages, haven’t read the whole thing. Nice summary of benefits and limitations below.

https://projekter.aau.dk/projekter/files/294663864/Master_Thesis__Vlad_Tiberiu_Radu__RISK4_11.pdf

Fire Department Drones Serve a Variety of Needs on Incident Scenes

Shorter article on firefighting drones talking about some experiences of fire departments. Again these drones are primarily used for information, not actually fire fighting.

https://www.fireapparatusmagazine.com/fire-apparatus/fire-department-drones-serve-a-variety-of-needs-on-incident-scenes/#gref

An Exploratory Study of the Use of Drones for Assisting Firefighters During Emergency Situations

Exploratory study on drones assisting firefighters in emergency situations Surveys firefighters and 911 callers Also looks at privacy and safety suggests multiple solutions, mainly communication, but also indoor usage

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3290605.3300502

autonomous navigation in complex environments

Autonomous Navigation for Micro Aerial Vehicles in Complex GNSS-denied Environments
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-015-0274-3
A general purpose configurable navigation controller for micro aerial multirotor vehicles
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6564733

2 studies on autonomous navigation in complex environments. I think way too difficult to do for us but it is a source to show it is possible

Victim detection

Vision based victim detection from unmanned aerial vehicles
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5649223
Hyperspectral imaging or victim detection with rescue robots
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4745869

Study on victim detection with UAV’s, the second one is more about finding bodies under ash, maybe not too interesting for us. Unless we also want to look into search after a fire.

AI simulations and programming environments for drones: an overview

Simulations:

Main reason: enable AI to learn how to perform tasks without the need of any human intervention
Objective: study the behavior of the drone-based application, provide training
Help in economizing the cost of the actual implementation of the system
Very important for drones to be simulated and evaluated before formally being put into use
Drones simulated with AI can track the fire outbreak by locating the areas affected and suppress the fire. (the drones have infrared cameras and other hardware)

Reasons drones are simulated:

Evaluate new technology
Low-cost training
Research and development

Vision and control: optical sensing or cameras

Trajectory planning: velocity, coordinates, location, flight path

Automatic navigation system: increases its speed to over 90 miles per hour; reduces the risk of poor navigation performance

Communication system: drones transmit data such as speed, direction, fixed points; communicate with other drones

AI issues in drones’ simulations:

High cost
Human error: drones can make mistakes especially if trained with the wrong data
Security and privacy
Adaptability: impossible for drones to adapt to changes in environments
Required expertise: need for programming and AI skills which are limited

Performance assessment parameters:

Coverage radius: drones have a precise coverage radius determined by its altitude, enables the base to receive and send signals
Drones’ throughput: drones are expected to froward data to stationary base stations
Scalability: depends on drone architecture
Battery lifetime: batteries have restricted capacity; researchers are trying to find a way to manage the power consumption

Open research issues:

Behavior and control
Computer vision: challenging because the nature of drone structure
Security and viability: issues in the GUI applications, affects the operation of the drone network
Communication: choosing the right for drone communication (network topology, architectural design, routing)
Vague simulation environments: difficult to obtain required results especially when several different simulation environments are used (difficult to compare the AI algorithms used for simulation and the accuracy of their performance)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341958826_AI_simulations_and_programming_environments_for_drones_an_overview

Machine learning for cyber security frameworks: a review

Machine learning:

Most common applications: image recognition and natural language processing
Appears to be a useful tool in providing security online
The purpose of research on ML applications for cyber security: employ the cognitive capabilities of ML to automate intrusion detection and forensic analysis of security breaches

Machine learning tasks:

Regression: deductions based on precondition
Classification: separating data unit or items into categories based on some attribute of the data
Clustering: grouping of data units or items
Association rule learning: making a conclusion based on an analysis of a previous event
Generative models: simulating data based on previous decisions

Cyber security tasks:

Intrusion detection: detect and notify concerned agents about an intrusion
Malware analysis: use a decompiler and debugger to decrypt the data stored by the malware and understand how it works
Spam detection: involves the techniques used to identify spam emails

Machine learning approaches for cyber security:

Regression: fraud detection (probability of fraudulent actions can be deduced by a linear regression model)
Classification: used in spam filters (natural language processing can also be applied)
Clustering: malware protection to separate valid user files from malicious files
Association rule learning: associate specific responses to different incidents in a system
Generative models: offensive cyber security (used to generate possible input parameters to test vulnerabilities in intrusion tests)

Effectiveness of machine learning in cyber security:

Important to analyze the effectiveness of these ML applications in comparison to already existing traditional methods employed in cyber security
Most existing cyber security protocols that use ML only apply ML to specific aspects of their frameworks
The idea of a fully autonomous cyber security framework still requires more research and experiments

What to take in consideration when decided whether to apply ML approaches or not:

What ML algorithm is best suited for the application
If the framework is aimed at general or specific threats
The frameworks vulnerability to adversarial attacks
The need for continuous and regular retraining the ML model

Conclusion:

ML oriented cyber security frameworks – still require a lot of continuous and fresh research
ML cyberattacks – have also automated cyberattacks as well => more difficult to handle
More useful research must take into consideration the shortcoming of ML approaches to cyber security

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128199725000021

a survey study on mac and routing protocols to facilitate energy efficient and effective UAV-based communication

Routing protocols for UAVs:

Requires location awareness, energy awareness, increased robustness to fragile links and dynamically changing network topology
Development of the routing strategies and protocols for UAV network: one of the most challenging tasks for UAV-based communication systems
A lot of research is being currently conducted on UAV routing
Existing routing protocols for wireless networks have been modified to suit UAV applications
Classified based on the routing strategies in 2 categories: single-hop and multihop routing protocols

Single-hop routing:

Main purpose of a routing protocol: transmit/forward the data gathered while increasing the delivery ration and minimizing delays and resource consumption
Routing protocols: should consider scalability, loop freedom and efficient use of resources such as energy, memory and computation time
One way to use UAV as communication systems: as packet bearers (transfers the relevant information when flying from the source to the destination)
This approach can mainly be employed for occasion with fixed topology

Multihop routing:

Another popular strategy employed to address the challenges for UAV-based communication systems
Classified into topology based and position based routing protocols
Topology based routing is divided into proactive, reactive, hierarchical and hybrid routing
Position based routing: in UAV, depending on the application, it is usually ideal to consider he network in three dimensions
Hierarchical routing: in UAV based communications used for coverage extension, relaying and data distribution and collection, using UAVs similar to traditional wireless sensor network infrastructures is also becoming quite popular
Hybrid routing: a few clustering based hybrid routing algorithms are proposed in the literature for UAVs

Data delivery models in UAVs:

Very difficult to analyze each and every application in UAVs from data delivery perspective
The traffic characteristics are very specific and distinct to the applications
The network’s performance: very critical while focusing on UAV applications
UAV applications (especially event-driven in nature ones): mission critical, real time and interactive
Query-driven UAV-based applications: also mission critical, real time and interactive
To save energy: queries can be sent on demand

MAC protocols for UAVs:

Self-organization, high-degree of coordination, management among the sensors: required to support the variety of application areas and make use of UAVs as effectively as possible
Energy preservation: one of the most important factors in the design of a MAC layer protocol
The choice of MAC: highly impacts the performance of the UAVs
No MAC protocol ha been standardized for UAVs among a variety of protocols available in literature
While designing a MAC protocol, the following attributes need to be considered:
- Throughput: the requirements of UAVs in terms of delivery efficiency are very specific to the task
- Scalability of the Network
- Latency: most UAV applications are critical where data needs to be sent in real time, latency needs to be kept to possible minimum
- Energy efficiency