A-Life - Increasing Survival Chances in Avalanches by Wearable Sensors Florian Michahelles, Timo Ahonen, Bernt Schiele, In 3rd International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing (IWSAWC 2003), at ICDCS 2003, Providence, Rhode Island USA, 2003, ISSN 1432-7864.

Abstract: Avalanches are one of the major threats to life in high mountain terrain. Once buried by an avalanche, survival chances dramatically drop from 92% after 15 minutes to only 30% after 35 minutes mostly due to the lack of oxygen. It is therefore extremely important to rescue any victims as fast as possible in order to maximize survival chances. Today's technology, so called electronic avalanche beacons, only allow to localize buried victims. In this paper we propose a novel avalanche rescue system enhanced with wearable sensors. Those sensors provide information about the vital state of buried victims such as heart rate, respiration activity, and blood oxygen saturation, as well as the orientation of the victim. We believe that this knowledge can empower non-professional companion rescuers with a tool to perform triage, i.e. sorting victims into categories of priority for treatment. Better allocation of resources can help to maximize survival chances of avalanche victims.

iwsawc.pdf

Bibtex Record

@Article{alife_iwsawc03,
  author =       {Florian Michahelles and Timo Ahonen and Bernt Schiele},
  title =        {{A-Life - Increasing Survival Chances in Avalanches by Wearable Sensors}},
  booktitle =    {Proceedings of 3rd International Workshop on Smart Appliances and
                  Wearable Computing}, 
  year =         {2003},
  address =      {Providence, Rhode Island USA},
  month =        {May}
}