Life-saving smart device monitors stress of fireys at front lines
As a smoky haze blankets the eastern states, stinging eyes and lungs, spare a thought for the firefighters on the front lines.
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As a smoky haze blankets the eastern states, stinging eyes and lungs, spare a thought for the firefighters on the front lines.
They’ll be exposed to large amounts of carbon dioxide, as well as a complex mixture of gases, volatile organic compounds such as benzene and aldehydes, and respirable particles like carbon, graphite and wood dust.
Brad Aisbett, an exercise scientist from the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Deakin University, has worked with firefighting and emergency teams for a decade to ensure they are able to operate at peak performance in such challenging conditions.
“Doing physical work in smoke is like doing intense work in heat,” he says. “It increases the heart rate and affects perception. And in a bushfire situation you have the combination of both smoke and heat.
“Firefighters and their captains need to be aware of the physiological impact of a high heart rate, or you can see issues such as poor decision-making or the inability to take and give instructions. This is taking place in smoky environments where your visual orientation is also affected.”
Acute exposure during firefighting can lead to eye irritation, nausea, headaches and dizziness, and Associate Professor Aisbett says that fire teams are very aware of the importance of crew rotation and getting affected crew members away from the front line. Crews develop a process for monitoring their peers for signs of distress.
A technological innovation from the Catalonia region of Spain may also be able to help.
Prometeo is a start-up that is building portable, real-time sensors that can be attached to a firey’s uniform. It’s the brainchild of a veteran firefighter, an emergency medical nurse with a PhD in toxicity, and three developers, who came up with the idea as part of the Call for Code Global Challenge, a worldwide developer competition that seeks technology solutions for natural disaster preparedness, response, and recovery that is supported by IBM.
The group was inspired by Joan Herrera, a 33-year veteran of firefighting in the mountainous forest parks on the outskirts of Barcelona. According to Salomé Valero, a member of Prometeo visiting Australia, Herrera was concerned about colleagues who had suffered from smoke inhalation and who had experienced long-term illnesses.
“We cannot prevent fires, but at least we can take care of our firefighters,” Ms Valero says.
Prometeo (Spanish for Prometheus, the deity who stole fire from the gods) is building a wearable unit the size of a mobile phone that contains sensors to collect data on smoke concentration and humidity. The plan is to give the firefighter real-time alerts about their exposure levels using artificial intelligence via the IBM Cloud.
Over time, the plan is to use the units to also collect longitudinal data about the long-term health effects.
“In the past, health data was collected manually but often the responses from firefighters would be ‘I feel OK’,” Valero says.
“These are tough men who don’t express their weakness, and sometimes it’s difficult for them to recognise that they don’t feel well. But ultimately, they are worried about their health.”
For now, the focus is on the frontline needs of firefighters. Prometeo is working with Catalonia’s fire department on prototype models to use in the field. It’s a design challenge as each gas requires its own specific sensor, and the units need to be housed in cases that can withstand heat, water and physical impact.
The team received $US200,000 ($295,000) from IBM as winners of Call for Code, as well as access to IBM’s Watson AI technology. The code that will process the data and alert crews is open source, so other developers can contribute to its successful rollout.
“We want to harvest the power of the open source community around the world,” says Josep Ràfols, one of the team’s developers and an expert in Internet of Things.
“This technology can be adapted to fire crews globally and potentially modified to mining, petrochemicals and even police.”
Ms Valero says that a solution like theirs may be increasingly important, as fire seasons appear to be getting longer and more severe. In June this year the worst fires in 20 years burned through 16,000 acres (6500ha) in Catalonia, and the European Union has had almost triple the average number of wildfires for the same period over the past decade.
“Fifty per cent of Catalonia is high risk for forest fires, and our firefighters are saying that because of climate change they are seeing more and more fires where the speed and intensity are so high they have no capacity to fight them,” she says.
Prometeo’s device won’t be available in time for this fire season but if conditions for bushfires continue to worsen, more pressure will be on fireys in the field here.
Associate Professor Aisbett said that tools that can help monitor signs of stress will be welcome.
“Firefighters are selfless and may not want to leave the front line, so sometimes you need a peer to say ‘we need you to rotate now’ even if you feel like you can go on,” he says. “A device that can send the data back to crew leaders and captains can be a really helpful tool because someone in the field might not be thinking clearly enough to interpret the data themselves.”
Ms Valero is pleased to be using her IT skills to solve global challenges.
“These are global issues, and developers and IT people want to help but often can’t find a way to do so. With Call for Code there is an issue every year, so it is a great way for us to make a difference.”
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