Prof. Lan Wang is on a team that was awarded a $418k grant from the Public Safety Communications Research Division of NIST to work with the City of Memphis to map building interiors for first responders.

In January, the Map901 team was notified of selection by Smart Cities Connect as a Smart 50 Award winner in the Urban Infrastructure category. Smart 50 Awards annually recognizes global smart cities projects, honoring the most innovative and influential work. The award includes recognition at the virtual Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo on October 27-29. The event offers the most comprehensive conference, exposition, and accelerator of smart city innovation in North America.

Due to the global pandemic, PSCR hosted a digital experience for sharing yearly research updates. All PSCR content hosted online beginning the week of June 21, 2021.

[Download PSCR Slides]

During the fall semester, Map901 hosted a second image annotation contest for University of Memphis students. Our motivation for hosting this contest was to expose the Map901 project to university students, provide an opportunity to learn about image annotation, and collect more training images. Over the course of two weeks, 22 University of Memphis students used Labelme to manually annotate images with our priority objects. The contest resulted in 94 annotated images that were used for training.

Due to the unprecedented circumstances caused by the global pandemic, PSCR is developing a digital experience for sharing yearly research updates. All PSCR content will be hosted online beginning the week of July 27, 2020.

[Download PSCR Slides]

During the spring semester, Map901 hosted an image annotation contest for University of Memphis students. Our motivation for hosting this contest was to expose the Map901 project to university students, provide an opportunity to learn about image annotation, and collect more training images. Over the course of three weeks, 17 University of Memphis students used Labelme to manually annotate images with our priority objects. The contest resulted in 113 annotated images that were used for training.

The Greater Memphis IT Council hosted its inaugural Tech Day in support of career education for the East High School T-STEM Academy Junior and Senior 2classes. Greater Memphis IT Council member organizations participated by providing educational tours as part of a day of field trips to provide insight and inspiration on careers in the technology sector. The Junior and Senior classes are comprised of 150 students who are taking part in this Shelby County School STEM program with a focus on the field of transportation and logistics. In addition to tours of tech companies, the students will learn about college opportunities with Southwest Tennessee Community College Associate degrees in Information Technology and University of Memphis Bachelor degrees in Engineering. College funding opportunities with the Tennessee Promise and Hope Scholarship programs will be covered during this educational outing.

See more photos here

Principal Investigator and Computer Science Professor and Chair Dr. Lan Wang was accompanied by Electrical and Computer Engineering then-undergraduate Thomas Watson. Dr. Wang presented in the Point Cloud City segment of the Location-Based Services track on the first day of the conference, July 9. The presentation was well received, with an audience evaluation score of 4.5 out of a possible 5 points.

As in Washington, the exhibit included a 3D visualization application of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis TN and a Virtual Reality tour of the Rosa Parks bus from The Year They Walked exhibit space. In addition, Mr. Watson demonstrated the Signac, a custom handheld device named for Pointillism art style developer Paul Signac. The Signac incorporates dual cameras providing post(top) and depth (bottom) and permits 3D scanning of smaller spaces such as utility closets and restrooms.

The exhibits generated lively interest, with many conference participants viewing the GIS application and the VR demo.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) in 2014 to encourage collaboration and the development of standards among those building smart city/community solutions. It benefits innovators and municipal governments from all over the world because it allows each to benefit from the experiences of others to improve efficiency and lower costs.

Wendy Harris and Joseph Roberts represented the City of Memphis last week at the GCTC expo in Washington, D.C. Wendy presented the project in a break-out session to 200 attendees and invited them to check out the Map901: Building Rich Interior Hazard Maps for First Responders' exhibitor's booth. At the booth, visitors moved through 'The Year They Walked' exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum virtually, explored the Insight 3D app developed for first responders to aid in indoor navigation, simulated a room scan with the GVI LiBackpack, and learned the do's and don'ts of indoor scanning.

The response was fantastic. Attendees of the exhibit booth included reporters, CEOs, professors, CTOs, VPs, and even elementary school students! They were all highly engaged with the work being done to map indoor spaces for first responders.

See more photos here

Map901 Day In Memphis

The City of Memphis held an open house for Map901. Attendees received the Map901 booklet, a virtual reality tour of an exhibit at NCRM, the Insight 3D app, and a hands on demo of the tools used to collect data.

Map901 was featured in NIST's article "Using Lasers to Save Lives - Mapping the indoors with lidar for public safety use cases" and TML's article "Memphis 3D mapping project charts the future of emergency response"

3D data capture is being employed as a matter of course in the public safety arena. By documenting accident scenes and forensic laser scanning to understand how accidents and intentional bad acts occur, for example, 3D information can deliver invaluable information to law enforcement and first responders.

Accurate building models with detailed annotations are critical to the safety of first responders and building occupants during emergency operations. In this collaboration between the City of Memphis and the University of Memphis, we will survey nine facilities with 1.86 million square feet of indoor space to produce annotated 3D point cloud models, 360-degree camera images and other sensor data. We will develop effective mechanisms to annotate the point cloud data with public safety objects.

When a fire breaks out inside a large structure like a mall or office building, firefighter safety is often at the mercy of blueprints or hand-drawn sketches to figure out the safest way to navigate the smoke-filled corridors.In Memphis, officials envision a new approach using light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, technology to create 3-D maps for first responders.

Cities lacking 5G power or seeking to save on bandwidth turn to edge computing solutions to put data in action.

In Memphis, officials envision a new approach using light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, technology to create 3-D maps for first responders.

Two projects are testing ways to use light detection and ranging (LiDAR) remote sensing to map the inside of buildings to increase first responders' safety and efficiency when they respond to emergencies.

The Map901 project was featured in GCN this week for its potential impact on first responders' safety and efficiency. The project involves the use of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology to map building interiors.