FRST Challenge

First Responder Smart Firefighting Challenge

The challenge focusing on tracking and situational awareness for first responders has reached its conclusion, with winners selected and numerous research initiatives and products developed. While GPS tracking offers a general idea of a person's location, it often lacks the precision needed to pinpoint their exact whereabouts, especially within buildings. Accurate location data is crucial for ensuring the safety of first responders during search and rescue operations.

This competition aimed to discover 3D tracking technologies capable of providing first responders with one-meter accuracy in indoor environments. The applications of such technology extend to emergency rescue scenarios and locating survivors within large structures. Winning teams will receive funding and entrepreneurial support to further develop and commercialize their solutions.

Challenge Overview

As first responders scour a building during search and rescue, the ability for incident commanders to know exactly where they are provides immense safety benefits. Having accurate location data in a structure is vital to their safety, especially in life-and-death situations where every second counts.

Risk is a reality of emergency response, and reducing this risk allows for faster and safer emergency engagements. Technologies that could potentially provide better situational awareness to first responders have developed rapidly over the past decade, with many wireless devices and sensors emerging within the global context of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, first-responder technology significantly lacks situational awareness regarding three-dimensional positioning inside building structures; while GPS can determine someone’s coordinates outdoors, it often cannot accurately determine where someone is inside a structure or which floor of a building they’re on.

Understanding a responder’s location in all three dimensions is invaluable to first responder coordination and safety. In this challenge, you’ll explore how 3D tracking technology can be used in high-stress, time-sensitive environments. Successful participants will produce a technology that can track first responders to <1 meter accuracy in three dimensions, with no pre-deployed infrastructure and in a variety of non-ideal environments. It is essential that the solutions developed and submitted in the final phase of the competition meet the diverse needs of first responders and are affordable.

Led by the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab (Now IU RedLab) in the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University, and funded by an $8 million cooperative agreement from the Public Safety Communications Research Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Prize money was awarded in each phase of the competition with a total of upto $5.6 million in prize funds awarded across five phases of the competition.

Congratulations to our Phase 5 Winners!

Our six finalist teams competed in localization and ruggedization tests at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center from October 23-27, 2023. Congratulations to each of the teams, with their awarded prize amounts!