3D building reconstruction and thermal mapping in fire brigade operations

Fire fighting remains a dangerous profession despite many recent technological and organizational measures. Sensors and technical systems can augment the performance of fire fighters and increase safety and efficiency during operation. An important aspect in that context is the awareness of location, structure and thermal properties of the environment. This work focuses on the design and development of a mobile system, which can reconstruct a 3d model of a building's interior structure in real-time and fuses the visualization with the image of a thermal camera. In addition, the position and viewing direction of the fire fighter within the model is determined and a thermal map can be generated from the gathered data. This helps an operational commander to provide accurate instructions to his men during a mission. First tests with our system in different situations showed good results, being able to reconstruct different larger scenes and create thermal maps thereof.