Waterloo, ONTARIO – April 12, 2022 – Mappedin, the leading platform for indoor mapping, announced today that it has launched its “Mappedin Response” product targeted at First Responder units. With the average North American spending 87% of their time indoors, First Responders increasingly need better situational awareness within the built environment. With expertise from working with the world’s largest building owners and operators, Mappedin enables First Responder teams to create, annotate, and view accurate indoor pre-plans in real-time.

Mappedin Response automatically digitizes paper-based floor-plans, allowing First Responder teams to maintain and access the most up-to-date version of every building floor-plan within their response area. This new product is being piloted across three Canadian cities, enabling Fire Departments to create and maintain pre-plans on-the-go from any tablet or PC.

“Over the last few years, Mappedin has spent time understanding the indoor mapping needs of Fire Response teams. It was clear that Fire Response teams were lacking access to up-to-date, digitized floor-plans to help with situational awareness before entering a building during an emergency,” said Hongwei Liu, CEO of Mappedin. “With our extensive experience in indoor mapping, we felt that this was our problem to solve. We have invested in Machine Learning to fully automate the conversion of paper-based floor-plans to a digitized format.”

With the built environment constantly evolving, having easily accessible tools to maintain accurate floor-plans at scale is critical. The Mappedin Response product has three functions to do this:

• Create – Automatically digitize raster floor-plans (i.e. photos). DXF, PNG and JPEG formats are accepted.
• Annotate – Once the floor-plans are digitized, add and edit symbols and annotations. NFPA and custom symbols are supported.
• View – Access up-to-date pre-plans to gain better spatial and situational awareness of a building in advance of arriving at an emergency call.

The development of the product was initially sponsored by The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Contract # 70RSAT20CB0000014. Mappedin is thrilled to have worked with the DHS on this project and ultimately have an impact on the safety of our communities.

About Mappedin

Headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Mappedin is the leading platform for indoor spatial data management, digitizing venues, and building best-in-class indoor mapping experiences. Built for scale, Mappedin’s flexible platform and enterprise grade tools enable them to work with leading operators and developers around the world. For more information, please visit www.mappedin.com.

Edward W. Bullard’s Father Founded Renowned Kentucky Company, Bullard

April 11, 2022 – Lexington, KY – Bullard, the Kentucky-based manufacturer of high-quality personal protective equipment and systems, announced today that Edward W. Bullard will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame next month. E. W. is being recognized posthumously for his invention of the Hard Boiled® hard hat, the first commercially available industrial head protection device, in 1919.

Founded in San Francisco by E. W.’s father Edward Dickinson Bullard, the E.D. Bullard Co. originally supplied carbine lamps and mining equipment to gold and copper miners. Upon returning home from serving in the U.S. Army in France during WWI, E. W. began working for his family’s business, and it was during this time that he recognized a need for improved safety in the mines. Inspired by the steel doughboy helmet he had worn in the Army, E. W. designed the Hard Boiled hard hat for gold and copper miners.

Though created initially for workers in the mines, Bullard’s hard hat was quickly adopted by workers in other industries. The Hard Boiled hard hat grew exponentially in popularity, ultimately leading to Bullard’s close work with Joseph B. Strauss, engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, to adapt Bullard hats to protect the bridge workers. Bullard hard hats were also used to protect workers on the Hoover Dam.

“For over 100 years, Bullard has been innovating and evolving our processes and our products to fit our customers’ ever-changing needs,” said Wells Bullard, CEO of Bullard. “Inspired by the vision and ingenuity of E. W. and his Hard Boiled hard hat, our team today follows a simple formula for success: watch, listen, learn. We watch our customers work and listen to their needs, and we learn about their specific job hazards, so that we can always provide them with the innovative products they need to go home safely at the end of the day.”

Today, Bullard, which relocated from California to Kentucky in 1972, is led by E. W. Bullard’s great-granddaughter Wells Bullard. The fifth-generation company, which still produces hard hats, has expanded to produce protective equipment and systems, including hard hats, fire helmets, respirators, and thermal imagers, for workers in a range of industries worldwide.

E. W. Bullard will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame at the 2022 Induction Event on May 5, 2022, in Washington, DC.

About Bullard

Founded in 1898, Bullard is a leading manufacturer of high-quality personal protective equipment and systems that are marketed worldwide. The U.S.-based company is a fifth-generation family-owned enterprise, highly respected for its invention of the hard hat in 1919. Today, Bullard’s product lines include hard hats, thermal imagers, firefighter and rescue helmets, supplied air respirators, powered air-purifying respirators, and air quality equipment.

Bullard products are available around the globe, with subsidiaries based out of Germany and Singapore.

More information about Bullard is available here.

The Little Rock Fire Department is without one of its fire trucks following a crash with an 18-wheeler Sunday evening, reports katv.com.

Police officials say the fire department was responding to the scene of an accident when a car rear-ended the parked apparatus. They add that no injuries were reported.

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The damage to the front-line apparatus is still being assessed, the report says.

Arkansas State Police released the following vis a vis the crash:

An Arkansas Motor Vehicle Crash Investigative Report, dated April 3, 2022, indicates that at 6:25 p.m. a commercial carrier truck and trailer collided with the rear of a Little Rock Fire Department apparatus rendering services at the scene of an earlier motor vehicle crash. The secondary collision occurred at the 13 mile marker in an eastbound traffic lane along Interstate 30 near the Interstate 430 overpass. The investigative report does not indicate injuries were sustained as a result of the collision.

Neither the investigative report, nor the violator citation, support a finding of distracted driving.

An initial contributing factor leading to the commercial carrier striking the rear of the fire department apparatus was the speed of the commercial carrier being too fast before attempting to merge into parallel lanes of traffic.

Negasi H. Asfaw, 23, of Sioux City, Iowa, the driver of the commercial carrier, was cited as a violator and charged with careless and prohibited driving, improper lane usage and failure to obey traffic control devices.

A Farnam firefighter was hospitalized and a department 2021 Chevrolet pickup totaled Thursday while crews were fighting a Gosper County wildfire in a pasture 11 miles southwest of Elwood, reports ruralradio.com.

Department officials describe the incident as such: the smoke became thick as the grass rig a crew member was driving entered an incline. The back wheels then dropped in a hole and the truck slowly rolled over.

One crew member was on the back of the rig as it began to give way, and he jumped off. The report says he broke his leg and suffered a hand injury, he had surgery for the former at a nearby hospital.

There was one passenger in the truck, who was not seriously hurt, nor was the driver, according to the report.

Strong winds and a dryness didn’t help the department’s cause against the stubborn fire, officials note.

After 50 years in service, the Carbon County KME plant just recently closed its doors, reports brctv13.com.

The final fire truck—an aerial—produced at the facility will remain in the area, though: The Lehighton Fire Department is set to soon take delivery of the fire truck and put it in service.

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Truck 523—four years in the making, including two in production alone—will replace the department’s 1989 ladder truck, according to the report.

It wasn’t planned that the aerial would stay in the area, “it’s just [coincidental] that it happened to be a department so close,” a KME official says.