Congress Considers Evacuation Tracking

The U.S. House is evaluating tracking technology for possible
deployment at Congressional facilities in order to locate House
members, staff and visitors during emergencies.

By Claire Swedberg

Feb. 7, 2005 - The United States House of Representatives is seeking
technology to track people in the event of an emergency. Vendors have
until Feb. 15 to submit information about a system that could report
on the location of House members, staff and visitors during an
evacuation from House-operated facilities. Vendors of radio frequency
identification products are among the companies responding to the
House's request.

"There are numerous ways to address tracking," says Erik Michielsen,
the director of RFID and ubiquitous networks at ABI Research, a
consulting firm based in Oyster Bay, N.Y. Few of these methods,
however, fulfill the House's high-tech requirements, such as 3-D
graphical displays.

"An RFID-hybrid solution would be optimal," Michielsen says. Such a
hybrid could combine biometric identifiers with RFID. "We're going to
be seeing more of the RFID-biometrics hybrids in the next year,"
Michielsen predicts, because the U.S. government has shown an interest
in that kind of solution.

In its official request for information, posted online on Dec. 2 at
FedBizOpps.gov, a government procurement Web site, the House's Office
of the Chief Administrator reports that it is seeking "reliable,
robust, and rapid accumulation of real-time operationally accessible
data" concerning the location and evacuation status of House members,
staff and visitors immediately after an emergency event and for a 24-
hour period afterward. That includes people who have gathered in
assembly areas, those who are in the building and need to report their
status, and those who have traveled to a different location. This
system would be used only during emergencies and activated during an
evacuation of the U.S. Capitol, the House's four main offices (the
Cannon, Longworth, Rayburn and Ford buildings), and other smaller
House-operated buildings clustered in an area of 0.8 square miles.

Approximately 13,500 legislators and staff work within these
facilities. At present, the House lacks a system for keeping track of
which people are in the buildings. Although staff members currently
have ID badges that incorporate an HID-type proximity RFID
transponder, the House has deployed proximity card readers for access
only at select places within the House complex, but not at building
entrances and exits.

The House is seeking a real-time geographic information system (GIS)
that would not only provide a 3-D graphical display of the buildings
but also show the current position of all individuals within and
around the buildings during an emergency. The system should also be
able to indicate which individuals have left the buildings and are now
in safe locations.

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Full article at RFiD Journal ...
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1392/1/1/

Cheers, Steve..

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