Tracking personnel inside buildings: a tough problem to solve.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

LOS ANGELES -- In the defense community it's called "blue force tracking," or the ability to know where your personnel are at all times.

First responders call it "accountability," and it was one of the major needs identified in the wake of 9/11.

Fifteen alarms sounded and more than 750 firefighters responded when the hijacked planes struck the towers, said Chief Robert Ingram, branch chief for weapons of mass destruction at the New York City Fire Department and chairman of the InterAgency Board for Equipment Standardization. Many of those firefighters lost their lives after they entered the buildings.

"How do you track that manually? You can't. And that is why other disciplines and agencies lose people," he said.

The InterAgency Board, a working group of first responders that identifies and approves technologies for use by police, fire and ambulance services, has listed the development of a 3-D tracking system as one of its top research priorities, he said. Commanders want icons on a screen showing them where all their personnel are, especially while they're inside buildings.

For New York, it's not as simple as sticking a Global Positioning System transmitter on a firefighter. As soon as they enter the subway or one of the city's 1,700 high rises, that signal weakens, or is lost altogether.

More than six years after 9/11, the fire department is still using a whiteboard and magic markers to keep track of personnel, he said. "It does not matter if it's fire, police or emergency medical services, everyone can use an accountability system like this," Ingram said.

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The Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency planned to test a prototype system in February that will let those manning command and control vehicles track firefighters when they enter a building.

Jalal Mapar, HSARPA program manager, said the first responder 3-D locator relies on a "cocktail solution." Five different systems will collect data to give a "best estimate" of locations. The goal is to "allow emergency managers ... to rapidly and effectively deploy and redeploy...