Augmented Cognition for Fire Emergency Response: An Iterative User Study

To facilitate the design and development of an advanced IT network specifically for fire crews at the scene of an emergency, the Fire Information and Rescue Equipment (FIRE) team from UC Berkeley conducted interviews at the Chicago Fire Department Training Facility in December of 2002. This review is broken into two main sections. The first details the information gained from the interviews directly, such as department practices and protocols, firefighter experiences with and expectations of communications technology, and fire command operations through the Incident Command System (ICS). The second half discusses how these results, along with other background studies, lead to a design of head of a head mounted display for firefighters as well as an infrastructure to gather and deliver information to firefighters.