CELLULAR TRACKING SYSTEM

Cellular Tracking System Radiation safety and homeland security are issues of utmost importance in the United States and the world at large as a result of the events in New York City on 11 September 2001. This paper focuses on the role of wireless communication in support of improved systems, procedures, and applications to provide improved awareness. The emergency response community has long desired the ability to process data in real time from a mobile vehicle and transmit the digested data to a central monitoring unit (CMU) at the command center (CC). The system has to be simple enough to be operated by relatively inexperienced personnel with minimal training. The Cellular Tracking System (CTS) described in this brief article has been designed to fulfill this need. A PC application has been developed which can exploit any communications indigenous to the incident site, as long as it is presented as EIA-232 serial data. This includes two-way radios using a radio modem or cellular telephones with a serial port. Geo-spatial data display is expedited by using relatively simple Commercial-Off-The-Shelf mapping software that easily permits plotting on any scanned map, diagram or photograph of the scene. This highly effective, yet straightforward, configuration is described to demonstrate its ease and utility for other cost or manpower limited applications. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office, under Contract No. DE-AC08-96NV11718. DOE/NV/11718—997-ABS.