Episode 193: SMART Systems for Saving Lives: A 3D Vision for First Responders with Kirk Mckinzie

Episode notes

How can first responders use mixed reality?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Thanks for joining our 16 part FRST Challenge Mini Series recorded at the competition! Tracking and situational awareness has long been a problem for first responders. That's why the FRST Challenge competition is designed to pinpoint 3D tracking technologies that provide one-meter accuracy for first responders in indoor environments, crucial for enhancing their safety during rescue operations.

The 6 finalist teams competed in localization and ruggedization tests at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center from October 23-27, 2023. Winning teams gain access to funding, business support, and live field testing opportunities to evolve their solutions for real-world application.

In this episode:

The role of IoT, cloud computing, and mixed reality in revolutionizing first responder strategies

Explore how digital data advancements are empowering public education and emergency response training

What comes after the FRST challenge?

Hear from Kirk McKinzie - President of McKinzie SMART Technologies LLC .

Kirk is an award winning SMART First Responder Technologist, providing subject matter expertise, consultancy, strategic partnerships, and project management aimed at digitally enhanced community risk reduction.

He leverages 30+ years of hands-on and practical emergency responder and rescue experience, and more than 10 years in adjacent 3D/360 technology to support international teams such as a speaker and author to government, enterprise, academia, start-ups, and operators focused on emergency response digitization and innovation for safer and more secure SMART communities.

So click play now to hear what he has to share, and stay tuned for the rest of our mini series!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro
2. 1:12 Meet Captain Kirk McKinzie
3. 1:48 Five years of shaping the challenge
4. 3:55 Planning and judging the challenge
5. 6:05 Why this is only the beginning
6. 6:53 From 2D PDFs to 3D data
7. 7:53 Shifting the paradigm on maydays
8. 9:04 Catalysts for change
9. 10:17 Kirk's advice to innovators
10. 12:55 Funding and changing the narrative
11. 14:06 Saving money through integration
12. 16:59 Who keeps pushing it forward
13. 18:41 Thanks to NIST PSCR and Indiana University
14. 21:07 Upcoming events
15. 21:19 Final thoughts
16. 22:21 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is the goal of the FRST Challenge?

The challenge focuses on producing marketable prototypes that demonstrate indoor localization tracking of first responders within one meter accuracy without any pre-deployed infrastructure. Phase five increased the challenges by including multiple responders, longer durations, and longer distances.

Hear it at 0:00

How long has Kirk McKinzie been involved in first responder tracking technology?

Kirk McKinzie has been working on this since 2017. It started with an ideation challenge with PSCR where his team took fourth place. The following year (2018) they asked him out to Boulder for a concepting meeting with about 20 first responders, and they did it two more times with a total of 50, 60 or more first responders to discuss doing a big 3D challenge in the future.

Hear it at 2:23

Why is 3D tracking considered important for first responders?

Kirk McKinzie says that knowing where people are in X, Y, and Z axis could be helpful if there's a mayday. Many teams now have not only tracking devices but viewing software platforms that display location in three dimensions on a 3D active map, shifting from 2D digitized PDFs that are only moderately useful in the heat of the moment.

Hear it at 6:53

How could 3D tracking prevent maydays?

When incident command can see where somebody is and that is not where they are supposed to be, they can redirect the firefighter before a problem occurs. For example, if someone is supposed to be on the AD corner assisting truck two pulling ceiling in a back bedroom but is seen somewhere else separated from their crew, command can intervene early.

Hear it at 6:53

What is Kirk McKinzie's message to entrepreneurs about public safety technology?

He encourages entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to local firehouses, law enforcement agencies, and EMS. He says to build technology for the end users, the 320 million Americans who are not first responders, making it hardened, encrypted, safe, and secure. If one agency is not interested, there are millions of others who might be.

Hear it at 10:17

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 193 transcript

SMART Systems for Saving Lives: A 3D Vision for First Responders with Kirk Mckinzie

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Kirk McKinzie

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new Smart Firefighting mini-series created during the phase five of the FRST Challenge, hosted at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center. The FRST Challenge focus is to produce marketable prototypes that demonstrate indoor localization tracking of first responders within one meter accuracy without any pre-deployed infrastructure. Many of you heard stories from phase four, and here in phase five, the challenges were increased by including multiple responders, longer durations, and longer distances. In these conversations, you will hear from many of the entrepreneurs, first responders, and team members involved that address these challenges and opportunities of X, Y, and Z axis tracking from multiple perspectives around scalability, usability, affordability, and more. This challenge is administered by the Indiana University Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab and funded by the NIST Public Safety Communication Research PSCR Division. Also, consider putting the NIST 5x5 Conference on your calendar, located in Chicago, June 25th to 27th, 2024. Enjoy this deep dive into first responder tracking technology, and please reach out with your thoughts. Possibly saving the best for last, sitting alongside a friend, mentor, inspiration, all around just great dude, Captain Kirk McKinzie. Kirk, how you doing today?

[1:24] Kirk McKinzie: I'm great I think we've made it through.

[1:27] Kevin Sofen: Well not yet you know it's 8:38 and supposedly the awards and everything is happening in 22 minutes and so we're almost there but I would say we're rounding third base that's for sure.

[1:36] Kirk McKinzie: Well and it's not the end of the FRST Challenge but the beginning of changing the paradigm what will it look like when we know where first responders are in X Y & Z.

[1:48] Kevin Sofen: So you've been working on this for longer than most people realize I think last night you had mentioned since 2018, 2017, you were kind of helping kind of shape this conversation. I know you've been kind of pushing the envelope on where tech needs to be for public safety for quite some time, but from this conversation, take me back to when you were first kind of starting this conversation to help shape this effort in 2018 to it's now October 27th, 2023. I mean, just give me a quick little summary last five, six years.

[2:23] Kirk McKinzie: And it's really fun to be here at the culmination of this because there was a gap in the middle where I wasn't hearing anything and then here we are today. But it started in 2017. There was a ideation challenge with an SPSCR. My team took fourth place. It was really just, okay, what's a crazy idea to do smart public safety and including extended reality concepts. And so in San Antonio, I met the team for the first time, and then the following year they asked me out to Boulder for a concepting meeting with a few dozen other first responders. I think it was two dozen, maybe 20 first responders that time, and then they did it two more times, I believe, a neighborhood of 50, 60 or more first responders to say, hey, we want to do a big 3D challenge in the future. And I said, 3D? And they said, well, three access. We have heard it would be the holy grail to know where people are in any event. I'm not, maybe not the holy grail, but it will be helpful if there's a May Day, for instance. And my understanding is they were thinking all the way back in 2016. And then last year and a half ago, the award was the opportunity to apply was announced and 25 teams came forward. And I was thinking about getting on a team. and then I talked to the PI here, the principal investigator, Dr. David Wild, and they said, you know, we could use you as an SME on the project, and I said, I would be honored. Then I get to watch the whole thing unfold.

[3:55] Kevin Sofen: So you've been, you helped kind of plan it, and then you've been a judge throughout this process, and I just was talking with Dale Rolfson from Indianapolis Fire. Talk me through this week a little bit. I mean, it was really a crazy logistical effort of a lot of different teams going to different spots from the hospital, to the prison, to the fire training ground, to the regularization test, to then having an army of students that were helping take all this data and synthesize it in a way to tee it up to you, the judges, to help kind of figure out, again, creating enough context to make a decision. You were kind of on the sidelines and then you were sort of helping really deliberate this data. Like, how was it?

[4:37] Kirk McKinzie: It was fun, dynamic, great working with Chief Rolfson, the CTO for Indianapolis Fire Department, some of the FirstNet authority, senior advisors, and going from station to station and watching the crews work together. Meanwhile, while the data scientists are crunching the numbers and then getting updates and looking at teams sending 14,000 packets of information during one test of JSON or JavaScript files. And it's such a huge operation to evaluate how our team's doing with the goal of one meter accuracy off grid. Down a long tunnel, a mile long tunnel, something in the neighborhood of. Then yesterday we were, I think, six hours sequestered. Somebody said they needed to use the restroom and someone else said, I'll yield my time so they can use the restroom. So some people were wondering, why are we gonna get to the award? because there's a lot of work to do. And thankfully, by say four yesterday afternoon, it was looking like, okay, we've got enough data to put some numbers in the columns. 5% for ruggedization and 60% for technical outcome and business plan reviews and so on all went into it. And so fun, exciting, and yeah, it's the conclusion of a five-year project and yet the launch of what's next.

[6:05] Kevin Sofen: So to expand on that, the launch, I mean this is, there's a lot of times, I mean I think with these competitions there's certain, maybe relief once it's quote unquote over, but at the same time I always think about this and one of the reasons why I started this podcast was that you go to these trade shows, you have all this energy and then all the time people just go home and do the exact same thing they were doing before. But we can't let this momentum and energy just stop here in Muscatatuck. We need to, if anything, double down and go twice as fast, twice as hard, in obviously the proper context, but why is this just beginning, and sort of where, what do you, what's your sort of messaging challenge in the industry of what needs to happen next as we continue to take the lessons learned and momentum from this challenge?

[6:53] Kirk McKinzie: I think the key is, and you've heard me mention this before, is that 2D, say digitized PDFs on public safety apparatus, are only moderately useful to the first responder. And there are tablets that can be removed, maybe for helping with floor plan. But in the heat of the moment, at least memory served for me, I didn't want to be carrying a tablet with me. I needed to go to work. And for incident command, they're setting up and now we have aerial views, satellite views of buildings, but primarily it's still 2D and two-way voice. And so now these teams that I've just witnessed, not only I have the tracking device, but many of them have a viewing software platform, a common operating picture system that allows, including an AR, augmented reality, to display their location in three dimensions on a 3D active map. And that's where we're beginning this journey, that of shifting the paradigm, Keeping the land mobile radio up and running, considering mission critical push to talk, three acts less location is, well, apparently a couple of teams are gonna be launching in a few months, a couple of fire departments based on one of the teams I was talking to. That's gonna be a whole industry shift. So go from, tell me where you are. You know, Mayday, well, who are you? Where are you? What's your air level, for instance? Are you injured? To, oh goodness, I can see where they are. and maybe even prevent the mayday in the first place, that when IC sees where somebody is, and that's not where they are supposed to be, they can say, hey, you're supposed to be on the AD corner, assisting on truck two on pulling ceiling in this back bedroom and they see them somewhere else separated from their crew. There's some potential benefit as we change the face of how we do public safety and to, you know, it's right there in your name, Smart Firefighting.

[9:04] Kevin Sofen: I mean, Kirk, we've been the catalysts in certain ways together, and I told you last night that a lot of what we do here at Smart Firefighting is from the seed that you planted and from that first geek together in Indianapolis at FDIC in 2018, to really when it was kind of starting the Smart Firefighting podcast after that and continue to have all these digital and virtual events. It was sort of a chance for us to have this call to the industry that we cannot do it alone. There's a lot of these big initiatives, and even just NIST alone has challenges across a lot of these sort of moonshot-style problems, kind of from the message to innovators and potential collaborators, and even you talk about some of these frustrations, so like how Uber is used and how could we utilize some of the best technologies from other industries and apply the. in public safety, I wanna hear Kirk's message to people that are thinking about innovative public safety or people that have technology in other industries and why they should consider collaborating with the public safety and maybe even suggestions on where to start and where to kind of go from there.

[10:17] Kirk McKinzie: Oh boy, we could spend some time on that, Kevin, but thank you, and yeah, the first geek together is we affectionately call, it was simply just, right, we were at FDIC together and there were a bunch folks thinking about digital innovation, digital transformation, knew that Web 3.0 or spatial computing was coming, that were, you know, it's the fourth industrial revolution, that the term metaverse in our circle had already existed. And it wasn't the name change from a social media company, it was the idea that we could do crazy things that had been used for training aerospace personnel, you know. NASA had a big VR program, or Department of Defense, law enforcement active shooter training, these super high-end synthetic environments, computer-generated illustrations that were meaningful. Everything from treating traumatic stress exposure to operational preparation, post-incent analysis, command and control. And so, all we just said was, hey, after the show's done today, you want to meet in the lobby, and we'll throw out some crazy ideas, and now there's this whole movement. And so for people starting the domain, and I don't know, maybe the CEO of Uber might be listening, whoever it is, let's do something for public safety to help the end user, which is not the several million first responders in America or maybe 10 million around the world, there's something in those numbers. It's the 320 million Americans that are not first responders and the 4 billion connected people on the planet that are not first responders. They're the end users, the beneficiaries. Build it for them. That's the market. Some have said that public safety is hard to penetrate, narrow market, regulated and so on. There's nothing about that's untrue. It's that build it for everybody else, harden it, encrypt it, make it safe, secure. the first responders, well, we improve literally the economy by making our community safer and more effective with things like Uber. So to the CEO of Uber, hey, you know, I know we haven't been in your domain, but a little bit we have. They have an emergency call option now, and that's making a difference. And OK, let's expand that concept that, yeah, it should be and it should be that intuitive, the UI UX, the automation, the trusted ML and AI, and a lot to cover on that subject alone.

[12:55] Kevin Sofen: To a conversation that you, Stefan, me, and others have been having, but it's the narrative of public safety. And a lot of times, there's the conversation of funding, where some departments, they're always clawing for every dollar to be able to, sometimes just buy the PPE they need to technically meet standards, and then there's apparatus that are 40 years old that departments are using or just a lot of different challenges from a funding side. But I think part of it might be part of the macro conversation that is the obstacles, the narrative of public safety and kind of always thinking of fire departments as a cost driver and at times maybe a burden. But when you think about it, like when you're in a time of need, I know there's nothing more comforting and having a fire, EMS, or police officer be there to help me or help you when you're in the time of need. What are your thoughts and maybe how we need to continue to change the narrative on how we perceive public safety as civilians, but then also from different city managers, city officials, and state and local government?

[14:06] Kirk McKinzie: Interesting perspective, and I'm thinking you're right on target that everyone's challenge there's more calls, not less. More destructive events, not less. I think the last decade report from U.S. Fire Administration, the fire deaths in the U.S. are up considerably. Over 100,000 U.S. fire deaths in my career. And fire is a small percentage of who we lose in our communities each day. And personnel are strapped, or departments are strapped for personnel. And frankly, we need to update the way we do recruitment and retention to include digital things for the next generation of folks who are digital natives. If they look, I had one student firefighter a few years ago to me say, if they're looking at a tool that doesn't have a touchscreen on it, they don't have anything to do with it. Now, a fire axe isn't going to have a touchscreen anytime soon, but guess what? There's some hydraulic rescue tool or some rescue vehicle rescue tools that are intelligent now, right? And meaning digitally enabled. And so it's coming in. So the city managers is rather than the cost of moving into smart firefighting, it's think of the savings, the potential for, I suppose the analogy is if I was going to the snow when I pack my chains. Now, depending, if it's a couple inches deep, you're not pretty comfortable in that in the rig I drive. But if it's five inches deep, oh, I'd sure travel a lot faster with a pair of chains instead of chains, right? So the same with the digital transformation that agencies will be more efficient. My hope, my belief is that many parts of it will help crews clear scenes more quickly after being more efficient in resolving them. There's a team out of the UK using computer vision live for emergency medicine calls where it triages the patient with AI to see what their heart rate is and their stability. And if instead of it just being a code two or a code three call, they triage it out and maybe, oh, well, all you need is you want to ride to a clinic, right? You don't want an ambulance. No, I don't want an ambulance. I don't want to go to the hospital. I just don't have a car, got a long cough, I need a prescription for antibiotics for bronchitis or something like that. And oh, okay, you send them a token for a transportation and then the EMS agency is able to be available for that heart attack, vehicle collision, fall from a horse, whatever the morning brings. And so agencies will be saving money through technological integration.

[16:59] Kevin Sofen: And I appreciate that context in terms of how we need to change the narrative. And I think another thing, just as I was looking around the room and just thinking about the conversation I had with Ari the other day, and a lot of it was kind of listening to you and Stefan talk and interact in some of your track record. I think it gives a lot of us hope and inspiration that while some of these problems seem insurmountable, that we indeed can address and solve some of these challenges to help get us to where we know we need to be. And I wanna thank you, Kirk, for just continuing to be a, being that guy who is pushing it forward and sort of, at times, maybe people think like, what is this guy talking about? But I think even seeing this week and seeing that the tech works, and it's there's a little bit of a last mile integration of how it's gonna be integrated to the first responder, but a lot of these things, challenges that exist in the market isn't, we can't just sit there and be like, oh, well, that's just the way things are. It's like, well, let's put our thinking gaps on. Let's figure out how we can address this. And the more I hear you talk and work with you, it's more I'm like, well, yeah, all these things are figureoutable. All these things are solvable. And, you know, kinda guess on that, I'd love to hear maybe a, I don't wanna say a plea, but kind of a message from you on sort of what would be your message to entrepreneurs about, you know, I guess not necessarily not giving up, but also why they need to continue to get involved and continue to find a way to leverage their brain power to solve a lot of these imminent challenges. And I know we haven't talked about in-depth all of them. We had a limited time here, but what would be your message to entrepreneurs about why we need them? And not just entrepreneurs, also other interested stakeholders.

[18:41] Kirk McKinzie: Yeah, well, it's interesting, Kevin, because we do have limited time. I can see people are setting up to allegedly give away some cash here today, funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology Public Safety Communication Research Lab. Huge shout out and thank you to them for all the work.

[18:57] Kevin Sofen: They've been involved. Say that five times fast.

[18:59] Kirk McKinzie: Yeah, Indiana University running this program, done a great job. And to you, Kevin, for what you've done with your recent connected smart vehicle to be that node in a mesh network, which includes with Darlene Ford and other partners, there's a bunch of, I don't know if they're still startups, maybe they're scaling, but they were startups. The teams that are in that vehicle that you put together and thinks to you on that you know what? That is, that's the last mile rig right there that'll allow these teams to stream their location regardless of traditional connectivity. And to the startups, please, bring your ideas down to local firehouse, law enforcement agency, EMS. And if that agency isn't interested, Guess what? There's a few million other folks that might be interested. I was talking to somebody yesterday saying that they had interviewed thousands of firefighters and when it really came down to it was about one percent were interested in the idea, but that one percent will become two percent, become three percent, just like when we moved from speaking trumpets in the 1800s to radios. The move to land mobile, or the move to radios, then they were just mobile, they were first just in the apparatus, not on the personnel. And then it was when I started, only the captain had a radio, and we thought, oh, well, when the firefighter has a radio, that'll be the Holy Grail. Not really, it was just as the firefighter had a radio, and they were talking when they weren't supposed to sometimes. And now we have this huge shift coming and we have a whole generation of incredibly intelligent and capable young folks and some older who have the wisdom of their gray hairs and have been in the industry and are bringing solution sets to us from the past generation, but with the additional savvy of their chronological advanced state, of which I share. So bring it, go to the firehouses, go around, ask around.

[21:05] Kevin Sofen: Bring it.

[21:06] Kirk McKinzie: See you. Yeah, see Kevin Sofen at FDRC or TSI. Tell me what are the dates for TSI again?

[21:13] Kevin Sofen: December 5th to 7th, Irving, Texas, IFC, be there or be square. Well, Kirk, I see we're kind of gearing up. I can see the proper tension in the air, but I gotta give you one final opportunity of a mic drop, a quote, a question, an insight. Any final parting thoughts you could give us here today?

[21:31] Kirk McKinzie: Well, I think there's gonna be some big like six foot long checks that are pulled out here shortly and my thought would be, hey, look at those teams, all of them, six finalists out of 25 starting teams. And you wanna get involved, reach out to one of those teams, say, you know, express your interest, they're all worthy. Every one of them's absolutely worthy and look forward to seeing what they do with the funding that help make safer and more secure public safety agencies to serve those that are in the need.

[22:01] Kevin Sofen: I'm Kirk, it's a pleasure and an honor and look forward to further collaborating and this was a shorter podcast, but better this than nothing.

[22:11] Kirk McKinzie: Well, it's a good excuse that there's gonna be cash on the table in a minute for somebody.

[22:15] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. It's gonna be fun to watch. And breakfast is still out, so be on that note.

[22:18] Kirk McKinzie: Thank you, my friend.

[22:19] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Kirk. Thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode. What did you think? What'd you learn? Hopefully something, right? Please reach out on social media with your thoughts on this episode and any other suggestions for future content. We look forward to capturing more important stories across public safety and are here at your service.