Supporting First Responders Localization during Crisis Management

In recent years, homeland security has represented one of the most relevant application contexts, which has collected the interest of both public authorities and research community. In case of a crisis event, it is the responsibility of public and government authorities to manage the response operations. One of the constant challenges encountered when managing emergency is the lack of real-time location-aware information by the first responders that act on the crisis site. This paper aims at drawing an overall picture of the achieved research progressed for supporting localization of first responders during crisis events occurring in urban areas and involving critical infrastructures. In particular, this paper presents a hybrid positioning approach, which combines the strength of signals received from landmark nodes placed by first responders on the crisis site with information achieved from motion sensors. Finally, we investigate the key research topics in the considered area and the potential impact on the future developments scenario.