RescuePal: A smartphone-based system to discover people in emergency scenarios

Currently, one in eight people live in neighborhoods with social inequality and around one billion people live in precarious conditions. The significance of where and how to live and in what physical, spatial, social, and urban conditions has become very important for millions of families around the world because of mandatory confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, many homes in poor condition do not meet the basic requirements for residential environments in the current framework. Theoretical models for the urban evaluation of this phenomenon are a necessary starting point for urban renewal and sustainability. This study aims to generate a model for evaluating homes in a situation of social inequality (hereinafter Vrs) with indicators on physical, spatial, environmental, and social aspects. The methodology used in this study evaluates housing, taking into consideration habitability factors (physical, spatial, and constructive characteristics), as well as the qualitative characteristics assessing the satisfaction of users with the adaptation and transformation of the housing and its surroundings. The application of 51 indicators distributed in four previous parameters was established for this study. This quantification identifies the deficiencies of the dwellings and sets the guidelines for the establishment of future rehabilitation policies for adapting the dwellings to current and emergency scenarios. The innovation of this study is the construction of a tool for social research surveys designed to include individual indicators from the dwellings’ users, to provide a more dependable representation of the problems found in Vrs. The results of this research identified the deficiencies of precarious housing and could be used for applying effective proposals for improvement of habitability and their surroundings in the future. Furthermore, the results showed that when all the indicators were considered, the level of lag reached would be similar to that of a real housing situation, further confirming the suitability of the methodology applied in this investigation.

Download Full-text

125 INTRODUCING AN IN SITU SIMULATION PROGRAMME IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

International Journal of Healthcare Simulation ◽

10.54531/whpg6255 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Harry Bateman ◽

Karen Johnston ◽

Andrew Badacsonyi ◽

Natalie Clarke ◽

Kathleen Conneally ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Intensive Care Unit ◽

Intensive Care ◽

Human Factors ◽

Professional Training ◽

In Situ Simulation ◽

Airline Pilots ◽

Staff Members ◽

Emergency Scenarios ◽

The Impact

This North London hospital has a 14-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU). As a small District General ICU, staff exposure to emergency scenarios can be infrequent. Lack of practice can lead to a reduction in staff confidence and knowledge when these scenarios are encountered, especially during the COVID pandemic. The ICU had not previously undertaken in situ multi-disciplinary team (MDT) simulation sessions on the unit.The aim of the study was to introduce a novel programme of MDT simulation sessions in the ICU and provide feedback with the aim of increasing both staff confidence in managing emergency scenarios and staff understanding of the impact of human factors.A team of ICU Simulation Champions created emergency scenarios that could occur in the ICU. Pre-simulation and post-simulation questionnaires were produced to capture staff opinion on topics including benefits and barriers to simulation training and confidence in managing ICU emergencies. Members of the ICU MDT would be selected to participate in simulation scenarios. Afterwards, debrief sessions would be facilitated by Simulation Champions and Airline Pilots with a particular focus on competence in managing the emergency and human factors elements, such as communication and leadership. Participants would then be surveyed with the post-simulation questionnaire.Nine simulation sessions were conducted between October 2020 and June 2021. The sessions occurred within the ICU during the working day in a designated bay with the availability of all standard ICU resources and involved multiple MDT members to aid fidelity. Feedback by Simulation Champions mainly focussed on knowledge related to the ICU emergency, whilst the Airline Pilots provided expert feedback on human factors training. Fifty-five staff members completed the pre-simulation questionnaire and 37 simulation participants completed the post-simulation questionnaire. Prior to simulation participation, 28.3% of respondents agreed they felt confident managing emergency scenarios on ICU – this figure increased to 54.1% following simulation participation. 94.4% of simulation participants agreed that their knowledge of human factors had improved following the simulation and 100% of participants wanted further simulation teaching. Figure 1 shows a thematic analysis of the responses from 31 participants who were questioned about perceived benefits from simulation teaching. Following the success of the programme, the Hospital Trust will continue to support and develop inter-speciality and inter-professional training, and have funded the appointment of an ICU Simulation Fellow to continue to lead and enhance future in situ simulation teaching on the ICU.

Download Full-text

Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Maximum Coverage in Emergency Scenarios Using the (1+1) Evolution Strategy with One-Fifth Success Rule

10.1109/enc53357.2021.9534767 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gabriela L. Rodriguez-Cortes ◽

Anabel Martinez-Vargas ◽

Oscar H. Montiel-Ross ◽

MA. Cosio-Leon ◽

Daniela M. Martinez

Keyword(s):

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽

Evolution Strategy ◽

Maximum Coverage ◽

Aerial Vehicles ◽

Emergency Scenarios

Download Full-text

Threshold-based energy-efficient routing for transmission of critical physiological parameters in a wireless body area network under emergency scenarios

International Journal of Computers and Applications ◽

10.1080/1206212x.2018.1554334 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

V. Navya ◽

P. Deepalakshmi

Keyword(s):

Energy Efficient ◽

Wireless Body Area Network ◽

Physiological Parameters ◽

Body Area Network ◽

Area Network ◽

Body Area ◽

Energy Efficient Routing ◽

Emergency Scenarios

Download Full-text

Scaling laws for delay-sensitive traffic in Rayleigh fading networks

Proceedings of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspa.2007.0330 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 464 (2096) ◽

pp. 2187-2205 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Nikhil Karamchandani ◽

Massimo Franceschetti

Keyword(s):

Rayleigh Fading ◽

Scaling Laws ◽

Scaling Limit ◽

Network Size ◽

Upper And Lower Bounds ◽

Destination Node ◽

Delay Constraint ◽

Delay Sensitive ◽

Remote Surveillance ◽

Emergency Scenarios

The throughput of delay-sensitive traffic in a Rayleigh fading network is studied by adopting a scaling limit approach. The case of the study is that of a pair of nodes establishing a data stream that has routing priority over all the remaining traffic in the network. For every delay constraint, upper and lower bounds on the achievable information rate between the two endpoints of the stream are obtained as the network size grows. The analysis concerns decentralized schemes , in the sense that all nodes make next-hop decisions based only on local information, namely their channel strength to other nodes in the network and the position of the destination node. This is particularly important in a fading scenario, where the channel strength varies with time and hence pre-computing routes can be of little help. Natural applications are remote surveillance using sensor networks and communication in emergency scenarios.

Download Full-text