IT-Supported Management of Mass Casualty Incidents: The e-Triage Project

Voice, analogue mobile radio, and paper have been successfully used for decades for coordination of emergencies and disasters, but although being simple and robust this approach cannot keep pace with today’s requirements any more. Emerging and established digital communication standards open the door to new applications and services, but the expected benefit needs to be carefully evaluated against robustness, interoperability, and user-friendliness. This paper describes a framework for IT-supported management of mass casualty incidents, which is currently under implementation and study. The four pillars of the concept are handheld devices for use both in daily rescue operations and in disasters, autonomous satellite-based communication infrastructure, a distributed database concept for maximal availability, and psychological acceptance research

Biosignal and context monitoring: Distributed multimedia applications of body area networks in healthcare

We are investigating the use of Body Area Networks (BANs), wearable sensors and wireless communications for measuring, processing, transmission, interpretation and display of biosignals. The goal is to provide telemonitoring and teletreatment services for patients. The remote health professional can view a multimedia display which includes graphical and numerical representation of patients’ biosignals. Addition of feedback-control enables teletreatment services; teletreatment can be delivered to the patient via multiple modalities including tactile, text, auditory and visual. We describe the health BAN and a generic mobile health service platform and two context aware applications. The epilepsy application illustrates processing and interpretation of multi-source, multimedia BAN data. The chronic pain application illustrates multi-modal feedback and treatment, with patients able to view their own biosignals on their handheld device

The Incorporation of GIS Technologies in Emergency Preparedness and Response

Public health agencies make decisions that have far reaching consequences, and geography impacts these decisions on a daily basis. Geographic information systems (GIS) are powerful computer software programs which can enable agency staff to visualize spatial information in new ways, so that they can become better planners and problem solvers, particularly in the areas of disaster preparedness and response (Chang, 2002). Yet, although GIS is becoming more well-known, it is still a technology in its infancy, with the majority of public health staff not gaining all of the competencies required to utilize it effectively in the workplace. Although several departments within an agency, such as epidemiology and city planners, are often leveraging this technology, there are many other staff involved in disaster preparedness and response who are not using it, but who may need to in the upcoming months (Blanco & Mathur, 2005)

The Incorporation of GIS Technologies in Emergency Preparedness and Response

Public health agencies make decisions that have far reaching consequences, and geography impacts these decisions on a daily basis. Geographic information systems (GIS) are powerful computer software programs which can enable agency staff to visualize spatial information in new ways, so that they can become better planners and problem solvers, particularly in the areas of disaster preparedness and response (Chang, 2002). Yet, although GIS is becoming more well-known, it is still a technology in its infancy, with the majority of public health staff not gaining all of the competencies required to utilize it effectively in the workplace. Although several departments within an agency, such as epidemiology and city planners, are often leveraging this technology, there are many other staff involved in disaster preparedness and response who are not using it, but who may need to in the upcoming months (Blanco & Mathur, 2005)

How Mobile Devices are Transforming Disaster Relief and Public Safety

With its growing usage, mobile technology is greatly improving disaster relief and public safety efforts. Countries around the world face threats from natural disasters, climate change, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities, among others. Mobile devices, tablets, and smart phones enable emergency providers and the general public to manage these challenges and mitigate public safety concerns.In this paper, part of the Brookings Mobile Economy Project, we focus on how mobile technology provides an early warning system, aids in emergency coordination, and improves public communications. In particular, we review how mobile devices assist with public safety, disaster planning, and crisis response. We explain how these devices are instrumental in the design and functioning of integrated, multi-layered communications networks. We demonstrate how they have helped save lives and ameliorate human suffering throughout the world

Analysis and Design of Mobile Collaborative Applications Using Contextual Elements

Collaborative mobile applications support users on the move in order to perform a collaborative task. One of the challenges when designing such applications is to consider the context where they will execute. Contextualized applications are easy to adopt by the users; unfortunately the design of contextualized tools is not evident. This paper presents a framework of contextual elements to be considered during the conception, analysis and design phases of a mobile collaborative application. This framework supports developers to identify non-functional requirements and part of the architectural design in order to get contextualized applications. The use of this framework is complementary to any structured software process. A framework use example is also presented as an illustration of its applicability

Globalstar for the Military

Globalstar, a new satellite-based mobile voice/data telephone service, is being planned by LQSS for operation in 1998. It will let military personnel, using handheld, ship-board, or vehicular mobile terminals in even the most remote areas of the world, to stay in contact with each other and with personnel who are on established communication networks. A constellation of 48 low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites and an advanced method of digital signal formatting will provide low-cost and reliable voice, data, fax and position-locating services to military personnel in most areas of the world. Globalstar will interoperate with existing local (domestic or foreign), long-distance, public, private, terrestrial-cellular, DoD, and specialized telecommunications networks. The system will permit the military, for its general purpose communications, to share with commercial MSS (Mobile Satellite Services) at low cost. This paper includes an overview of the Globalstar system and describes possible DoD applications

Towards developing smart environment using wireless sensor and ad hoc networks

The miniaturization process of various sensing devices has become a reality by enormous research and advancements accomplished in MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) and VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) lithography. With the advancements of such optimization techniques for hardware, algorithms, and protocols for networking, various wireless technologies have also emerged. The attractive features of these modern technologies have attracted many researchers to work on the design, application and utilization of systems benefited by these high-tech equipments. As a consequence, the idea of smart environment has been come into vision. The focus of this paper is to propose a framework for developing a smart environment aided with the wireless technologies which not only aims at smartening the surrounding environment but also could facilitate the use of a number of smart systems