Managing Catastrophic Events by Wearable Mobile Systems (original) (raw)
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Smart Garments for Emergency Operators: The ProeTEX Project
IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, 2000
Financed by the European Commission, a consortium of 23 European partners, consisting of universities, research institutions, industries and organizations operating in the field of emergency management, is developing a new generation of "smart" garments for emergency-disaster personnel. Garments integrate newly developed wearable and textile solutions as like as commercial portable sensors and devices, in order to continuously monitor risks endangering rescuers' lives. The system enables detection of health state parameters of the users (heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, position, activity and posture) and environmental variables (external temperature, presence of toxic gases and heat flux passing through the garments), to process data and remotely transmit useful information to the operation manager.
Fire fighters and rescuers monitoring through wearable sensors: The ProeTEX project
2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 2010
The final generation of ProeTEX prototypes has been delivered in April 2010: it consists in two sets of sensorized garments devoted to the monitoring of the health status of emergency operators working in harsh environments. This new release of garments shows several improvements with respect to the previous ones, and it is characterized by a major specialization to the requirements imposed by the different categories of end-users (Fire Fighters, Civil Protection rescuers) addressed by the project. Each ProeTEX prototype is provided with a communication infrastructure allowing the real-time remote transmission of data recorded by the wearable sensors, and the presentation of such data to possible managers supervising the activities of the first line responders. After the delivery of the prototypes, an intense validation of the garments is being carried out both in laboratories specialized in physiological measures and in simulated fire-fighting scenarios.
Smart garments for emergency operators: Results of laboratory and field tests
2008 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2008
The first generation of ProeTEX prototypes has been completed at the end of August 2007. In the following period two main activities have involved the project partners. On one hand new technologies (in terms of sensors and devices) to be integrated in the next releases of prototypes have been developed; on the other hand intensive test sessions on the first prototype (both in laboratory conditions and simulating real operative scenarios) have been carried out.
Smart Sensing Uniforms for Emergency Operators
Advances in Science and Technology, 2008
Textile integration of smart sensor systems is the key technology for the success of future e-garments oriented to emergency operators. Ubiquitous recording and transmission of human and environmental data will allow combining comfort and protection leveraging with the existing smart textile, microelectronics and telecommunication technologies. The challenge offered by emergency situation is mainly in the difficulty to acquire data in a very aggressive environment, during hard physical activity; conditions that will increase the risks of signals artefacts, as well as the presence of positive and negative false events. Security is addressed through the implementation of systems combining body sensing platform, for health alertness and environment sensing platform for context awareness; the full system has also to guarantee protective functionality. State of art textile technology allows the monitoring of heart and respiratory rate, humidity rate, activity rate, GSR and EMG, while cor...
Long-distance monitoring of physiological and environmental parameters for emergency operators
2009 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2009
The recent disaster provoked by the earthquake in middle Italy has pointed out the need for minimizing risks endangering rescuers' lives. An European Project called ProeTEX (Protection e-Textiles: MicroNanoStructured fiber systems for Emergency-Disaster Wear) aims at developing smart garments able to monitor physiological and environmental parameters of emergency operators. The goal is to realize a wearable system detecting health state parameters of the users (heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, position, activity and posture) and environmental variables (external temperature, presence of toxic gases and heat flux passing through the garments) and remotely transmitting useful information to the operation manager. This work presents an overview of the main features of the second prototype realized by ProeTEX with particular emphasis to the sensor's body network and the long distance transmission of signals.
2012
A set of garments capable of mon itoring the physiological, act ivity-related and environmental parameters of emergency operators during their interventions was developed in a Eu ropean Project called ProeTEX. Th is work reports the results of the field trials performed with the final prototype release at the APT international Fire Fighting Survival Training Centre in Italy. Four sessions of trials (warm-up, rescue intervention, outdoor fire-fighting intervention and smoky chamber route) were performed in harsh environ ment by 6 professional Fire-Fighters. The operators wo re the ProeTEX p rototypes and their Heart Rate (HR), Breathing Rate (BR), Body Temperature (BT), External Temperature (ET), Heat Flu x (HF) and GPS speed have been acquired. Percentage of samples out of the physiological range (R % ) of the HR, BR and BT, as well as percentage of samples showing h igh variability (V % ) of the HR, BR, BT, ET and HF have been processed. Percentage of GPS samples showing artefacts of their ground speed (S % ) have been also computed. The results on the HR, BR and BT signals showed a maximu m R % of 2.0, 7.8 and 8.5 respectively, as well as a maximu m V % of 14.0, 10.0, 0.2, respectively.
ERWear: Wearable System Design through the Lens of First Responders
Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, 2016
We explore the design of a wearable computing solution for first responders. Wearable devices have many uses, but commercial devices are not suitable for emergency response. First responders face high risk and volatile situations, and wearables possess significant potential to keep responders safe. A lack of understanding exists when designing wearables for first responders. Existing research focuses on the physical implementation of various sensors, rather than usability. Combining literature and extensive interviews, we devise design guidelines for responder-oriented wearable systems. We propose a prototype system, and discuss early feedback from responders.
Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers Adjunct Program - ISWC '14 Adjunct, 2014
For workers in extreme environments, such as firefighters, thermal protective clothing is essential to protect them from exposures to high heat and life threatening risks. This study will investigate the design of a new smart protective clothing system, which incorporates sensors in the undergarment to measure physiological data, such as skin temperature, heat flux and heat rate to assess the thermal status of the worker. The aim of this paper is to outline the design of the smart wearable undergarment and the evaluation process for testing the smart undergarment in a controlled environment.
Biosensing and environmental sensing for emergency and protection e-Textiles
Conference proceedings : ... Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual Conference, 2011
The ProeTEX project introduced for the first time a complete set of smart garments integrating sensors for the physiological and environmental monitoring of emergency operators. These "smart" garments have been deeply tested in emergency-like contexts by professional rescuers, in order to assess real-time acquisition, processing and transmission of data from moving subjects while operating in harsh conditions. Here we report an overview of the main results obtained during field trials performed in 2010 by Italian and French professional firefighters, in specialized training centers, while dressing the ProeTEX prototypes. Results clearly demonstrate the benefit and step forward of such a system in order to monitor and coordinate rescuers even during intervention far away from the emergency headquarter.
Smart Protective Clothing for Law Enforcement Personnel
Materials Science. Textile and Clothing Technology, 2015
Smart protective clothing is a promising niche for innovative products with great potentials on the textile and apparel market. Generally, smart textiles are defined as textile products with integrated, additional functions. These functions provide solutions for a wide variety of applications such as healthcare, sports, protective clothing and the automotive industry. Smart protective clothing offers many possibilities to increase the safety of operations and reduce casualties. However, the integration of smart functions into protective clothing provides many challenges. The functions need to be fully integrated into the protective clothing, so that they do not result in a weakening of the armour. The main goal of the European research project SmartPro is the development of lightweight and flexible protective clothing for security personnel with integrated smart functionalities. These include heart rate sensors, a damage control system and a geolocalisation module as well as wireless data transfer by means of textile antennas.