Augmented Reality Farm MAPPER Development: Lessons Learned from an App Designed to Improve Rural Emergency Response

ABSTRACT

Fire departments have right-of-entry to most commercial industrial sites and preemptively map them to identify the onsite resources and hazards they need to promptly and safely respond to an emergency event. This is not the case for private farms. Emergency responders are blind to resources and hazards prior to arrival and must spend critical minutes locating them during an emergency response at a farm location. The original 2013 Farm Mapping to Assist, Protect and Prepare Emergency Responders (Farm MAPPER) project was undertaken to develop a method to give emergency responders an up-to-date view of on-farm hazard information to safely and efficiently conduct emergency response activities on private agricultural operations. In 2017, an augmented reality version of Farm MAPPER was developed to combine the technological advantages of geographic information system-based data points with a heads-up display and graphical overlay of superimposed hazard imagery and informative icons. The development and testing of this iOS- and Android-ready prototype uncovered lessons learned applicable to other mobile-based apps targeting farmers, ranchers, and rural populations faced with limited or inconsistent mobile internet connectivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Augmented reality
• emergency responders
• farm safety
• fire department agriculture
• geographic information systems
• GIS
• hazards
• injury
• mapping
• trauma

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the project advisors – Casper Bendixsen, PhD and David Schwebel, PhD. The authors would also like to thank Marie Fleisner from the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute’s Office of Scientific Writing for assistance with editing the manuscript.

Institution and Ethics approval and informed consent

No human subjects were involved in this project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health [5U54OH010162]; Pilot/Feasibility Projects Program of Central States Center for Agricultural Health and Safety Center [NIOSH 5U54OH010162].