BACKGROUND On 4 October 1992, a cargo aircraft crashed into apartment buildings in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Fire-fighters and police officers assisted with the rescue work. OBJECTIVES To examine the long term health complaints in rescue workers exposed to a disaster. METHODS A historical cohort study was performed among police officers (n = 834) and fire-fighters (n = 334) who performed ...

Computational tools have been developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for modeling fire spread and smoke transport in order that various professionals such as fire protection engineers, fire researchers, fire investigators, fire fighters, AHJ’s (authorities having jurisdiction) etc. may study the dynamics of fire with the ultimate aim of improving fire safety. The...

In the course of this paper, a by IFEN GmbH developed integrated navigation device for aiding and rescuing fire fighters in emergency situations is presented. In areas with sufficient signal strength the respective rescue force is tracked by means of GNSS/INS position information, whereas indoor or in areas without GNSS support, the positioning is conducted by means of a foot mounted inertial m...

First, we will briefly introduce oriented percolation with our focus on a special orientation on the square grid. Then we will discuss critical probabilities of bond or site percolation on this particular orientation. Finally, we will introduce the Fire-fighting Problem and prove a theorem regarding an upper bound for these critical probabilities in the case that fractional fire-fighters were a...

This experiment was designed to investigate the efficacy of 16 weeks of exercise training as an intervention to reduce the psychophysiological response of fire fighters to psychological stress. Fifty-three members of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) were recruited as participants and were randomly assigned to either exercise on a rowing ergometer or to continue their present modes of exercise t...

This paper discusses the possibility of using multiple low-altitude, short endurance (LASE) Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) to cooperatively monitor a forest fire. The UAVs will individually track the fire’s perimeter by means of an on board infrared sensor. Using a decentralized cooperation scheme the UAV team will collect data and upload it to a base station. Simulation results are presented tha...

There are different forms of human-robot interactions, allowing a team of humans and robots to take advantage of skills of each team member. A relatively new area of research considers interactions between human and a team of robots, called a swarm of robots. This paper discusses possible forms of interactions in swarm robotics within the Guardians project. The paper particularly addresses the ...

Fire modeling is used to understand and to predict possible fire behavior without getting burned. Fire models are used in different aspect of fire management. The increase in the number of forest fires in the last few years has forced governments to take precautions. Beside prevention, early intervention is also very important in fire fighting. If the fire fighters know where the fire will be i...