The brief
The UK fire and rescue services handle over 55,000 incidents inside buildings and other structures each year. In a live hostile environment, keeping track of each firefighters’ location at all times is a major problem faced by fire crews the world over.
During a fire and rescue emergency, incident commanders need as much situational awareness as possible to keep crews and the public safe. Firefighters already carry a thermal imaging camera to detect heat signatures, which gives them a vague layout of the room they’re in, however, once inside a building or structure, no live tracking of their progress is available.
The Challenge
It was a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition with Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service (MAWWFRS). The funding is available through the GovTech Catalyst, a £20 million fund that helps the public sector to work with innovative technology providers and improve public services.
MAWWFRS designed the £1.25m GovTech Catalyst brief to develop pioneering technologies that can be used in the field to give accurate data on where firefighters are at all times.
£1.25m GovTech Catalyst Funding to develop a pioneering, lifesaving safety solution, which will reduce operational risk and further enhance the safety and wellbeing of firefighters.
The solution needs to:
The incident premises may not be known to the service before the event, so fire crews often do not know the landscape they’ll face on entering.
The Solution
Greeve formed a collaboration with fellow phase one competitor, Oxon Tech, to go on in the final phase as ‘Arwain’ (meaning to lead or guide in Welsh) this combined team ensured the right mix of software and rugged hardware engineering skills to solve this highly complex challenge. The Arwain team beat over 45 entrants through to the final phase of the challenge to develop a working prototype.
The Arwain digital localisation system is easy and quick to deploy, and works at all locations, no matter the size or complexity of the layout.
