Supporting Urban Search and Rescue with digital assessments of structures and requests of response resources Albert Y. Chen a,⇑ , Feniosky Peña-Mora b , Albert P. Plans c , Saumil J. Mehta d , Zeeshan Aziz e a Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan b The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia University, 510 S.W. Mudd Bldg., 500 W, 120th St., New York, NY 10027, United States c Universitat of Politècnica de Catalunya, Carrer de Jordi Girona, 1, Barcelona, Spain d Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign, 205 N Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, United States e School of Built Environment, University of Salford, The Crescent, Salford, Greater Manchester M54WT, UK article info Article history: Received 9 August 2010 Received in revised form 14 June 2012 Accepted 14 June 2012 Available online 12 July 2012 Keywords: Urban Search and Rescue Building assessment MANET RFID GIS abstract First responders, including structural engineers and firefighters, inspect buildings and identify the struc- tural integrity of buildings within a disaster affected area. The performance of their inspection and dis- semination of the assessment information are critical to Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) operations. This paper presents an innovative approach for structural assessment and resource requests through an application – Supporting Urban Preparedness and Emergency Response using Mobile Ad hoc Network (SUPER-MAN). The goal of this research is to address challenges encountered in the current practice for structural engineers and first responders to inspect and disseminate building damage assessments and resource requests more efficiently to support US&R. The SUPER-MAN system is equipped with Radio Fre- quency Identification (RFID) tags, as the storage device of assessment information on the disaster site, and a Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) with a Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) implementation for com- munication. SUPER-MAN strengthens responders’ situational awareness, reduces confusion of inconsis- tent assessment formats, and automates information dissemination and editing. As a result, lifesaving operations are adequately prioritized, risk of first responders are minimized, and requests of response resources are facilitated. Results obtained from field trials carried out at the Illinois Fire Service Institute with a simulated disaster scenario and computer simulations of the MANET are presented to highlight the benefits provided by SUPER-MAN. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction One of the most urgent and vital challenges confronting the society today is the vulnerability of urban areas to large scale disasters [1]. Natural and human-induced disasters such as earth- quakes, hurricanes and terrorist attacks cause damages to physical infrastructures. In such events, Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) operations are carried out for location, rescue, and initial medical stabilization of victims. To support US&R, resources – such as con- struction equipment and materials – are required for shoring of structures, selected debris removal, and lifting of heavy structural components or injured victims. In addition, infrastructures, such as the transportation and utility networks, also require construction equipment to restore critical functionalities and services to support disaster response and recovery. Distribution of response resources during US&R requires access to critical information for efficient and effective decision making. ‘‘Throughout the government, nothing has been harder for officials than to set priorities, making hard choices in allocating limited re- sources’’ [2]. Efficient information gathering and decision making for prioritization and distribution of resources are critical to sup- port disaster response efforts. At the same time, safety of the rescuers is one of the most important responsibilities of US&R, and the structural integrity of damaged infrastructures is a key factor of rescuers’ safety [3,4]. Typical tasks performed by structural engineers include (1) assign- ment of building priority for search and rescue (S&R), (2) leaving markings on buildings to inform others of the structural integrity, (3) identification of required shoring for temporary stabilization of the structures, and (4) monitoring of building conditions, in case of further collapse. Structural Triage, used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) US&R teams, is the process of gathering informa- tion of structurally compromised buildings to determine opera- tional priority for S&R [5]. The priority is set based on factors 1474-0346/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2012.06.004 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: albertchen@ntu.edu.tw (A.Y. Chen), feniosky@columbia.edu (F. Peña-Mora), albert.plans@upc.edu (A.P. Plans), mehta10@illinois.edu (S.J. Mehta), z.aziz@salford.ac.uk (Z. Aziz). Advanced Engineering Informatics 26 (2012) 833–845 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Advanced Engineering Informatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aei