ProFiTex - Providing Fire Fighters with Technology for Excellent Work Safety

Contact Persons

Burcu Cinaz
Sebastian Feese
Dr. Bert Arnrich

Objectives

ProFiTex is a research project funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union.  The overall objective of ProFiTex is to increase work safety and efficiency of fire fighting interventions through advanced protective equipment including in particular sensing technologies for increased situational awareness and a novel solution for robust communication.  Our contribution consists of monitoring firefighter's health and performance by means of wearable sensor technologies.

Monitoring Firefighter's Health

Firefighting is a potentially dangerous task. High physical and psychological loads are inevitable ingredients of fire fighting interventions. The combination of high physical demands, sudden changes from low to high-level intensities, unexpected alarms and environmental stress are risk factors, which lead to overexertion and fatigue. If not recognized early enough, the risk of injury or even death is increased.  We consider the continuous monitoring of firefighter's health as a new opportunity to prevent long-term damage by giving early warning signs in case of prolonged overload.

Monitoring Firefighter's Performance

In order to prepare firefighters for their job in a realistic way, often a simulation based training approach is conducted. Simulation based training consists of training opportunities in real world environments, accurate performance monitoring and in providing feedback and guidance to the trainees. Obviously, without accurate performance monitoring no clear guidance can be provided and team performance cannot be improved in a systematic way. We therefore aim at the development of a methodology to automatically and objectively assess team performance in a training scenario by means of wearable sensors.

Publications

Available soon.

Links

Official ProFiTex Website