RESCUECELL

PORTABLE KIT FOR DETECTING TRAPPED AND BURIED PEOPLE IN RUINS AND AVALANCHES

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Although avalanches, earthquakes and collapsed buildings are claiming an increasing death toll due to urbanisation, climate change and tourism, Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are limited and expensive. Even research efforts for Search and Rescue services are relatively unimportant due to the specific and therefore limited market for existing products. The main limitations of existing SAR methods are their inefficiency, time involvement and costly as they are very directional and limited in range and accuracy. In addition, their usage is complex and requires intense training and sophisticated methodology or even resorting to a specialised team. Therefore, there is an urgent need for developing a unique, easy-to-use, cost-efficient, safe and reliable tool in order to locate victims who are buried under debris or snow, providing accuracy of their position in a swift way. As experiences from disaster situations show than most of the victims carried mobile phones with them, the aim of the RescueCell project is to develop a novel accurate location system based on mobile signal measurements in order to create a cost-effective and portable kit for emergency search services, easy to be to be installed and used. The SMEs participating in this project will greatly benefit from exploiting the RescueCell application for the location of cell phones worldwide. The RescueCell system is expected to lead to significantly faster searches in SAR missions resulting in finding more survivors, and also in reducing the related SAR cost proportionally. Apart from money savings due to the lower SAR operation cost, and reduction in hospitalization costs, there is also the value of a life or health that cannot be quantified. If this technology saves lives, this research will undoubtedly be worth an investment.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Bigger cities mean worse building disasters. Fortunately, most victims carry mobile phones, which can help rescuers to locate them.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Rising populations combined with increasing urbanisation means more frequent disasters necessitating rescue from building rubble or snow.

However, in Europe, at least 80 % of survivors carry mobile telephones, which suggests opportunities for new rescue technologies.

Working towards that was the 'Portable kit for detecting trapped and buried people in ruins and avalanches' (http://www.rescuecell.eu (RESCUECELL)) project.

The 8-member consortium will run for 2 years to the end of 2014, and will have received over EUR 1 million in EU funding.

The project's aim is to develop an affordable and portable system for accurately locating mobile phones belonging to trapped victims.

The system relies on software defined radio technology. This compares a mobile phone's signal strength and time of arrival across several nodes, and computes a time difference of arrival. From that, a 'burial' position can be calculated using trilateration and hyperbolic methods, like other mobile phone locator services.

The RESCUECELL system would be used in conjunction with other rescue technologies and complement their weaknesses.

Project results to-date are on schedule. The project began by studying the topologies of natural disasters in collapsed structures and avalanches, which yielded a summary of existing rescue systems and their capabilities. Surveys of first responders and other experts provided information about operational rescue requirements and constraints. As a result, the project conducted preliminary testing of hardware.

Other work included developing error mitigation techniques for software and hardware, conducting a system-level simulation, and developing data fusion algorithms.

Subsequently, the project designed and fabricated all system components from scratch. A later redesign reduced system cost and complexity.

The last phase of the technical work involved implementation of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) procedures to include emergency call support.

As a result of RESCUECELL's work, victims trapped in collapsed buildings will have a better chance of being rescued. Furthermore, the technologies provide opportunities for European businesses.