NIST Sponsoring Smart Firefighting Workshop
Interest in the March 24-25 event in Arlington, Va., exceeded the available meeting space, according to the agency.
A workshop titled "Smart Fire Fighting, Where Big Data and Fire Service Unite," is taking place later this month with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. Department of Commerce agency, as the sponsor. The workshop supports the project the agency is working on with NFPA and the Fire Protection Research Foundation to develop a "Research Roadmap for Smart Fire Fighting," according to NIST's announcement of it.
"The fire service and other emergency first responders are currently benefiting from enhanced-existing and newly-developed electronic technologies. Fire fighters are now operating in an ever increasing sensor rich environment that is creating vast amounts of potentially useful data. The 'Smart' fire fighting of tomorrow is envisioned as being able to fully exploit select data to perform work tasks in a highly effective and efficient manner. Behind the advances of the new sensor and tool enhanced fire fighter of tomorrow are profound questions of how to best enable effective use of this deluge of valuable information. This is an area that is informed by the field of ‘cyber-physical systems’ and which promises to change the world of firefighting as we know it," it states.
The workshop will examine how best to effectively use data available from buildings, communities and on the fire ground, the computational power to compute and communicate that data, and how to convert it into beneficial decision tools.
Interest in the event in Arlington, Va., exceeded the available meeting space, so additional participation is now by invitation only, according to the agency.