COORDINATORs are coordination managers for fielded first responders. Each first response team is paired with a COORDINATOR coordination manager which is running on a mobile computing device. COORDINATORs provide decision support to first response teams by reasoning about who should be doing what, when, with what resource, in support of which other team, and so forth. COORDINATORs respond to the...

Efficient communications are crucial for disaster response and recovery. However, most current public safety land mobile radio (LMR) networks only provide narrowband voice service with limited support of low-speed data services. In this paper, we study to enhance the interoperability of LMR with commercial wireless cellular networks, by which a wide variety of benefits can be offered to disaste...

Methods First aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation is provided by 215 first responders who use their smartphone (iPhone 4S/5). The population purchased 95 AEDs which are available around the clock and placed less than two kilometres apart. FirstAED is an auxiliary to the public services and it enables the emergency dispatcher to send an organized team of first responders with distinct roles to...

The arrival of new devices and techniques has brought tracking out of the investigational stage and into the wider world. Using Wi-Fi signals is an attractive and reasonably affordable option to deal with the currently unsolved problem of widespread tracking in an indoor environment. Here we present a system which aims at overcoming weaknesses in existing Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) by us...

This paper introduces a new approach for selecting the location of Radio Frequency (RF) sensors used for detecting objects in a building. It is assumed that a building, its map and its main building materials are given. A number of moving or static objects, carrying RF tags are to be detected in this building. RF sensors are used to detect the tags. The time interval between the moment that the...

The terrorist events of 2001 brought to light the need for a close working relationship between the first responder communities and the public health laboratories in New York State (NYS). Since 2002, the Wadsworth Center's Biodefense Laboratory (BDL) has been providing outreach training to first responders in New York, to enable them to respond safely, correctly, and confidently to biothreat ev...

We provide an overview of previous research conducted by our group on risk and resilience factors for PTSD symptoms in police and other first responders. Based on our work, the findings of other investigators on individual differences in risk for PTSD, and drawing on preclinical studies fear conditioning and extinction, we propose a conceptual model for the development of PTSD symptoms emphasiz...