"We''ve finished the GPS collection project for fire hydrants and have since GPS-ed storm drain inlets and about 20% of the water valves," says David Allen, GIS manager for Euless. "Our storm drain maps were generated for a Governmental Accounting Standards Board statement but are useful to the fire department in containing chemical spills."Another benefit: Firefighters no longer have to GPS-locate hydrants. "I typically go out and GPS the new ones as they are installed," Allen says. "Since this is only a few each month, it is easy for me to keep the maps current."

Controlling the Integrated Water-Recovery SystemIn this section, we describe the control tasks for the final IWRS system that went into test in 2001, first by subsystem and then for the IWRS as a whole (figure 8).The Biological Water ProcessorFeed water from the waste-water collection system (figure 3) first passes through the BWP. The main control task for the BWP is to keep the water in the gas-liquid-separator (GLS) (see the lozenge icon with the three-level switches in the upper left of figure 8) at mid-level, which is accomplished by varying the speed of the feed pump, and the draw from the reverse-osmosis main pump remains constant. The other requirement is to monitor the pressures in the recycle loop, as well as in the nitrifier tubes, and carry out automatic shutdown procedures in the case of off-nominal values. For example, if one of the nitrifier tubes shows too high a pressure, the water and air pumps associated with this tube are shut down, and a warning is issued.

Now, a relatively new technology shows promise of adding an element of certainty to an otherwise uncertain rescue.Downed firefightersOrange County (Fla.) Fire and Rescue has completed initial field tests of a Global Positioning System - based rapid-deployment, in-building personnel geo-location and tracking system for use by firefighters on the fireground. The system is designed by MeshNetworks of Maitland, Fla., a mobile broadband networking firm, with systems integration assistance from IBM.This Mesh Enable Architecture system, a spin-off of the company''s sophisticated military battlefield geo-location solution, employs three or four routers mounted on 6-foot tripods positioned around the burning building. Once the routers obtain their exact latitude and longitude via GPS, they are able to perform wireless radio triangulation to fix the location of any firefighter within the perimeter who''s equipped with a cell phone - sized transponder device.

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