Study of efficiency of USAR operations with assistive technologies.

Simulation

Search and rescue exercises to test the newly developed technical search means

Detection of victimsLocalization of victimsVerificationRescue

The evaluation was performed by professional USAR workforces of the THW and in particular of the Rapid Deployment Unit for Salvage  operations Abroad (SEEBA) which is trained for assistance in international disaster response.

The key to efficient operations is not only the gathering of accurate information, but also its adequate presentation and dissemination that contributes to enhance a collective situational awareness.Especially during USAR operations, the collection and presentation of uncertain information from various sources is challenging. A Decision Support System called FRIEDAA has therefore been developed that additionally has the capability to fuse uncertain information about positive and negative results of search activities.

The goal of this paper is to report whether the new assistive technologies have potential to increase the efficiency of a USAR mission based on first field tests during which these novel approaches for victim localization and information fusion have been deployed.

The key improvement would be the extension of bidirectional communication between Emergency Operation Center and on-site emergency workforces. The simulation of extrication operations is difficult. A realistic training situation would endanger victim performer and represents a major time investment of 10 h in average.Ongoing developments about Pedestrian Dead Reckoning and SLAM will allow robust localization in all circumstances and enhance the capability to log operational progress in complex three-dimensional terrain.Conventional maps of operational progress are poor in content and functionality compared to GIS supported maps such as delivered by FRIEDAA. The benefits of non-verbal digital transmission of messages became evident through the first field test.Digital management of communication makes it possible to display delay between information in the field and reception in the emergency operation center.The WLAN communication infrastructure was lacking of coverage within and behind buildings during the first field test. The lack of coverage caused delays. However, this can be remedied with other digital radio communication technology such as GSM or TETRA.The SEEBA stressed the importance of portability of the assistive technologies. The bio-radar was particularly promising in this regard. It proved to be a valuable tool for detection of victims in rubble that are unable to alert rescuers.The search probe allowed a hitherto unreachable penetration depth. The navigation pane with two artificial horizons are important for the rescuers to orientate themselves within the rubble pile. A good coordination between the emergency workforce pushing the hose and the one controlling its stiffness and the navigation from the head joints is required.

The assistive search technologies all contributed to more effective search. The synergy with canine search proved to give more accurate results with respect to certainty of presence, location accuracy, and situation awareness. The assistive IT-system enabling digital communication of messages proved to be a valuable tool. It not only enhanced the message volume and detail sent by on-site rescuers improving the collective situational awareness, but also enabled the decision-makers in the Emergency Operation Center to focus on other tasks such as surveillance by disburdening them from the logging task.

Two field tests have been carried out by SAR professionals to evaluate the proposed methods of the I-LOV project. The first field test focused on the benefits of FRIEDAA during the response to large scale incidents. Especially, communication performance was assessed based on the number of messages Nmes. The second field test allowed to evaluate the new search technologies. In order to facilitate objective comparisons, both experiments were carried out within two runs, on the one hand with assistive tools of the I-LOV project, and on the other hand without.The second field test took place in a completely destroyed area of 0.58 ha with ten rubble piles at the school of the THW in Hoya, Germany. Three victim performers were hidden in a sewer system under the rubble piles. Furthermore, a worn piece of cloth was placed within one rubble pile, in order to check whether the dogs would neglect correctly this false target. As in the first field test, two runs were performed, but FRIEDAA assisted in both of the cases.