RESCUECELL - FP7

RESCUECELL will develop a portable kit for detecting trapped and buried people in ruins and avalanches.

The Project

RESCUECELL aims at developing a cost-effective, robust and lightweight technology, that can easily be transported to the affected zone, and that allows spreading the Nodes covering the entire zone, leading to the location of possible injured people swiftly within some minutes. The system will also be able to guide rescuers, first indicating how to spread the Nodes properly to cover the entire zone, and second giving precise indications of the location of buried people.

Why RescueCell?

While 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 SAR 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.

The RescueCell technology is an ideal complimentary system to be used in SAR operations along with current techniques to increase the efficiency of sniffer dogs, for instance.

The RescueCell equipment is composed by three parts:

Static Nodes: small units that will be placed in the surrounds of the affected area.

Mobile Nodes: portable units that will be carried by rescuers to improve detection and help them locate the victims.

Control Node : this node will collect the data from the Static and Mobile nodes and will manage the entire system.

RescueCell Benefits:

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 savings money due to a lower cost of SAR missions, and reduction in hospitalization costs, there is also the value of a life or health that cannot be quantified.

Partners

Hellenic Rescue Team participates as a partner while the rest of them are:
1. Rubin Informatikai Zrt
2. Smi Communication
3. Mira Telecon
4. Engineerisk
5. Ateknea Solutions
6. UPC
7. GIES

Project's website : http://www.rescuecell.eu/

“The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme managed by REA Research Executive Agency  under grant agreement n° FP7-SME-2012-315007″