TOWARDS SEAMLESS INDOOR-OUTDOOR POSITIONING: THE IOPES PROJECT APPROACH

Abstract. The management of emergencies require the use of multiple resources that must be coordinated to achieve the best possible results. For a good decision-making process, the availability of timely and reliable information about the variables on which such process rely is crucial. Among these variables, the ability to track the position in the field - either outdoors or indoors - of the members of the emergency teams it is of special importance. The IOPES project targets at improving an existing, already operational emergency management system where the tracking of operative staff is integrated. This paper concentrates only in the positioning aspect of IOPES - which encompasses other subsystems, such as portable communications or fast mapping - and describes the approach adopted by the project to perform such integration. This includes the concept itself, the hardware selected and well as the algorithms used to implement a portable, lightweight positioning device able to provide seamless indoor / outdoor positioning that will make possible the real-time tracking of personnel in the field. Promising preliminary results for mixed indoor-outdoor trajectories are as well presented.