Environment and situation monitoring for firefighter teams

Abstract

Environment and situation awareness are key factors to effectively work or even to survive in harsh environment. Over recent decades, the need to adequately protect the human in various dangerous situations has forced the development of clothing industry in the direction to provide high innovative products, and equip their products with sensors or other means of smart technologies. Besides basic functions of protection, thermal and ergonomic comfort, these new generation protective garments have served also functions like monitoring and/or protection. Heat injury is a major issue for firefighters as they wear insulated clothing and cannot shed the heat generated from physical exertion. Early detection of heat issues is critical to stop dehydration and heat stress becoming fatal. Early onset of heat stress affects cognitive function which combined with operating in dangerous environment makes heat stress and dehydration a critical issue to monitor. Physiological status monitors measure firefighter's vital sign status, fatigue and exertion levels. This allows a Fire Chief to call in additional personnel before the crew gets exhausted and also gives an early warning to firemen before they run out of energy, as they may not be able to make voice calls over their radio. However early solutions have been only partly accepted by the professional end users. Design requirements such as cost, bulkiness, accuracy, independency, scalability, robustness are key parameters, which can cause high acceptance or usage prevention rapidly. We approached the development of intelligent fire suits integrated with a data acquisition (DAQ) system and we are using enabling technologies to collect measured physiological and environment information about the firefighter(s) remotely. In our first prototype we are monitoring basic physiological parameters as well the microenvironment temperature. With our DAQ solution we measure, combine, transfer physiological and environmental signals collected from and within the firefighter's suit to monitor and visualize whole firefighter platoons remotely.