Google Glass in the Fire Service

Imagine being notified of a structure fire immediately on and being presented with the address and nature of the incident right in your vision.  Then imagine getting details of the incident location such as type of occupancy  floor plans, and any other available info all hands free.  Then your safety officer records and streams video of the fire as he arrives on scene providing evidence for investigators and an extra set of eyes to the incident commander.  This may be reality much sooner than you think.

Google Glass is here - at least to a few select "Glass Explorers".  For those not familiar with Google's latest mobile device Google Glass is a pair of glasses with a display in users field of vision.  There is also a camera and a "bone conduction transducer" that pumps sound directly into your head.  One can imagine the types of apps that could be beneficial - navigation, schematics for works displayed so they never have to move hands, music for musicians.  Glass will also be able to do Google+ hangouts which could be a killer app. Could this be then next big thing in mobile computing?  Only time will tell at this point, but it is definitely interesting and I can't wait to try this in some fire department use cases.

Google held a selection process ( #ifihadglass) to find first users of Google Glass.  Yours truly actually got picked!  At least 2 other firefighters have been selected as well(+Jeff Miller +Max Wood ). I have yet to get a pair(and may not at $1500!), but I am going to start working on a Glass application for the fire service.  Interested?  Join my Google+ community.  I'm looking for testers.

Glass is expected to be available to the public late this year and price is not known.  The explorer edition is going for $1500 however the final product is most likely going to be much less.  

Mobile Apps, the Cloud, and the Fire Service

Mobile devices and cloud computing have taken the world by storm and are revolutionizing business and industry.  The computing power of laptops of a few years ago can now be held in the palm of your hand.   Wireless internet connectivity, GPS, touch screen interfaces, and built in cameras, and a price tag of around $200 or less make these devices truly game changers.  In fact people are buying these devices faster than any other consumer electronic before.  At last count 700,000 android devices are activated everyday and nearly a total of 250 million android devices sold.  Mobile devices using Google's Android OS and Apple's iOS (and to a lesser extent MS phone) and cloud computing are truly changing the world.

How will this change the fire service and public safety sector?  A number of apps have been developed for android for use by firefighters and more are sure to come.  So far most have been fairly simple apps, however more sophisticated and complex apps are beginning to emerge making the mobile platform a valuable tool in the firefighter's toolbox.  A few of the apps currently available are: 

• Cargo decoder - digital ERG book
• FirefighterLog
• CadPage
• Hazmat evac - provides isolation zones based on ERG book
• Radio Scanner - streaming audio from RadioReference.com
• WISER - hazardous materials lookup
• Pulse Point -   alerts citizens of cardiac arrests
• Fire Chief magazine
• Fire Engineering magazine
• Friction Loss calculators
• Shift schedules

This blog will be reviewing apps as they come available.