Collaboration Surrounding Beacon Use During Companion Avalanche Rescues

When facing an avalanche, backcountry skiers need to work effectively both individually and as a group to rescue buried victims. If they don’t, death is likely. One of the tools used by each person is a digital beacon that transmits an electromagnetic signal. If buried, others use their beacons to locate victims by searching for their signals, and then dig them out. This study focuses on the collaborative practices of avalanche rescue and the interactions with beacons while backcountry skiing. We conducted interviews with backcountry recreationists and experts, and we observed avalanche rescue practice scenarios. Our results highlight aspects and challenges of mental representation, trust, distributed cognition, and practice. Implications include three considerations for the redesign of beacons: simplicity, visibility and practice

Proxemic Interactions in Mobile Devices to Avoid the Spreading of Infections

International audienceCurrently, people's daily lives are affected by the pandemic produced by the COVID-19. One of the main problem is the quickly and easy spreading of the virus. Healthcare workers are affected by nosocomial infections (also called as hospital-acquired infections) that exist in workplaces and more specifically, from health care equipment. In practice, the use of technology is quite common in health care settings. However, due to the touchability of mobile digital devices, their use contributes to nosocomial infections, according to several studies. Some applications based on tracking people have been implemented in order to facilitate Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and preventing contamination of surfaces by people's hands. Notwithstanding, their use still presents limitations related to implementing applications to be used in some hospital environments, such as care rooms, laboratories, clinical workrooms. To overcome these limitations, we propose the use of interpersonal distances and proxemic dimensions (i.e., Distance, Identity, Location, Movement, and Orientation-DILMO) for implementing HCI with mobile devices that reduces their touchability. The aim is to facilitate the development of mobile apps with proxemic HCI, supported in a proposed architecture, to stop spreading of nosocomial infection of COVID-19 and others. To show the usability and suitability of our proposal, we present two prototypes of apps for mobile devices as proof-of-concept, using several combination of proxemic DILMO dimensions to model proxemic HCI that allow flexibility in interpersonal and devicespeople interactions

Appalachia Winter/Spring 2014: Complete Issue

Winter/Spring 2014 - Volume LXV, Number 1 - issue #237. At Large: Four Stories of Escape to Wilder Land

Firefighters' Perceptions on Collaboration and Interaction with Autonomous Drones: Results of a Field Trial

Applications of drones in emergency response, like firefighting, have been promoted in the past decade. As the autonomy of drones continues to improve, the ways in which they are integrated into firefighting teams and their impact on crews are changing. This demands more understanding of how firefighters perceive and interact with autonomous drones. This paper presents a drone-based system for emergency operations with which firefighters can interact through sound, lights, and a graphical user interface. We use interviews with stakeholders collected in two field trials to explore their perceptions of the interaction and collaboration with drones. Our result shows that firefighters perceived visual interaction as adequate. However, for audio instructions and interfaces, information overload emerges as an essential problem. The potential impact of drones on current work configurations may involve shifting the position of humans closer to supervisory decision-makers and changing the training structure and content

Appalachia Winter/Spring 2017: Complete Issue

Winter/Spring 2017 - Volume LXVIII, Number 1 - Issue #243. Glaciers Melt, Mountain Goats Cope: Also, The Everyday Becomes Strang

Appalachia Summer/Fall 2018: Complete Issue

Summer/Fall 2018 - Volume LXIX, Number 2 - Issue #246. Role Reversal in the Mountains: New Perspectives, New Circumstance

The search for and location of inhomogeneities in seasonal snowpacks utilizing ground-penetrating radar

The location of singular objects or layered transitions below the surface and properties thereof in the ground are a pivotal topic in geosciences. In mountainous regions is the investigation of objects and layer transitions specifically of interest for the seasonal snowpack, primarily to reduce the threat to humans and infrastructures by natural hazards. Snow avalanches are a major natural hazard causing numerous fatalities throughout the world and they are a direct consequence of snowpack conditions. The annual fatality numbers of avalanches are fairly constant for the last 30 years, while in other fields such as e.g. road traffic these numbers decreased significantly. It can be assumed that the permanent enhancements in active and passive safety systems in road traffic are the reason for the decrease in victim numbers. In the field of professional search and rescue operations or accident prevention in avalanches such as hazard forecast, enhancements of instrumentations are marginal for the last three decades. The present study describes two different assessments for the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) systems to improve the instrumentation for the location of buried avalanche victims and the prediction of avalanches. Consequently, it demonstrates the feasibility of radar systems for the detection of inhomogeneities in seasonal snowpacks. With regard to the improvement of current methods to search and locate buried avalanche victims, which are not equipped with a location device (e.g. avalanche beacon), the main objective is to shorten search time. The assessment of this thesis was therefore to use helicopter-borne non-invasive location methods. To simulate helicopter flights, test arrangements were designed to perform field tests from above the surface. I developed methods to measure from 6--12 m above the snow cover. To measure non-invasively, the arrangement is based on pulsed radar technology. To shorten search time and to minimize the influence of man-made error possibilities, an automatic location software was developed. The results of the field tests present the answers of the fundamental questions for an airborne location operation and enabled the development of a location algorithm. Measurements showed, that the sidewise detectable range of 3--5 m of an antenna set-up with one transmitter -- receiver pair is rather small for the given flight height of 6 to 12 m. Furthermore, the reflection amplitude of the snow surface decreases almost linearly with the flight height. Unfortunately, in wet snow avalanches a buried object in the snowpack does not appear as typical reflection pattern and is therefore not explicitly locatable. The developed software algorithm proved to be sufficient for all applied test arrangements in dry snow conditions. The algorithm is able to distinguish between buried victims in the snowpack and reflections caused by only air holes within the snow cover. Further implementations on helicopters can be achieved, based on these results, but more field tests are necessary to adapt the software to the rougher flight conditions in helicopters. Concerning the observation of stratigraphic inhomogeneities within a snowpack, this thesis showed that a record of specific snowpack conditions from beneath the snow cover is feasible with GPR. The assessment of the present work is to provide snowpack information in avalanche endangered slopes and to follow the temporal evolution of the snowpack over a whole season. Two different kinds of field measurements in dry and wet snow conditions were performed to ascertain the GPR set-up, which provides the best trade-off between penetration depth and layer resolution. On the one hand, temporally singular measurements at different locations, concerning altitude, snowpack conditions and climatic regions in the European Alps, enabled the determination of capable test arrangements. On the other hand, a temporal monitoring of the snow cover at a fixed position over several months, facilitated the record of the change of specific parameters in the snowpack. In terms of system parameters, antennas with a center frequency of about 800--900 MHz are able to penetrate and adequately record stratigraphic transitions in dry and wet snow conditions. The radar-measured snow height in dry snow using a mean wave speed value for the conversion of the two-way travel time was in a good agreement to the probed snow depth and arose in an uncertainty slightly higher than of ultrasonic sensors. In terms of snowpack parameters, the recorded signals of the various snow covers were in good agreement with the measured snow properties. For dry snow conditions, the appearance and the manner of reflections recorded in the snow cover corresponded to the size and the algebraic sign of the gradient in snow density. Moisture in the snowpack attenuates the radar signal significantly. This thesis presents encouraging results of the use of impulse radar technology for the location of inhomogeneities in seasonal snowpacks. Parts of the presented results and methodologies (e.g. the automatic location algorithm) are possibly easily adaptable in related areas of geoscientific research and could also provide advances in other, non-snow related fields

Autonomous, Collaborative, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Search and Rescue

Search and Rescue is a vitally important subject, and one which can be improved through the use of modern technology. This work presents a number of advances aimed towards the creation of a swarm of autonomous, collaborative, unmanned aerial vehicles for land-based search and rescue. The main advances are the development of a diffusion based search strategy for route planning, research into GPS (including the Durham Tracker Project and statistical research into altitude errors), and the creation of a relative positioning system (including discussion of the errors caused by fast-moving units). Overviews are also given of the current state of research into both UAVs and Search and Rescue