Project Title
SixthSense – Smart integrated eXtreme environment health monitor with sensory feedback for enhanced situation awareness
Project Goal
Raising the level of safety of members of first responders organisations in performing their daily tasks by monitoring overall health of users via sensors that provide feedback and enhanced situation awareness.
Duration
1 May 2020 – 30 April 2023
Description
The project is a multidisciplinary innovation and research action with the overall aim of developing a wearable health monitoring system with closed loop tactile biofeedback, that allows first responders in hazardous situations to sense their current health status. It will allow early detection of risk factors that could lead to rapid deterioration of health or operation capabilities of first responders, by leveraging predictive models based on multi modal biosensor data (e.g., lactate, Na, K, HR, temperature). As a team management tool, it will enable real-time monitoring of all deployed operatives, helping increase team effectiveness and operational safety.
To help accelerate the pace of technological advancements aimed at first responders, beyond the scope of the project, SIXTHSENSE will establish a novel research methodology for sustainable inclusion of first responders in a co-development process.
The Public Fire Brigade of the City of Rijeka will participate in this project through practical activities on the preparation and testing of the final product, sharing 157 years of experience and knowledge of real needs, and limitations and challenges that firefighters face in extreme conditions. The Public Fire Brigade of the City of Rijeka will participate in joint activities with its firefighters to help the consortium obtain relevant information on environmental exposure, physical exertion and high stress effects during firefighting activities.
In the field testing of the prototype, the City of Rijeka will provide its training resources (in earlier stages) and the ability to perform activities in real conditions (for a later prototype) to measure the level of stress in firefighters during firefighting activities in urban and rural areas and in nature (forests, mountains, sea, rivers, lakes
…), where firefighters perform all types of firefighting interventions, extinguishing structural fires, industrial interventions, extinguishing fires on high buildings, extinguishing forest fires, extinguishing fires on vessels, rescue from depths and heights, USAR, water rescue, diving interventions ( ). Furthermore, the Public Fire Brigade of the City of Rijeka will enable the use of indoor fire behaviour simulators.
Project partners
The project consortium comprises 21 organisations from nine European countries, coordinated by TECNALIA Research & Innovation (Spain).
- Universities: Aalborg Universitet (Denmark), Universidad de Leon (Spain) and Technische Universitaet Chemnitz (Germany);
- European Research and Technology Organisations: TECNALIA (Spain), Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft (Austria), BioNanoNet Forschungsgesellschaft (Austria), Eucentre Foundation (Italy) and Tecnalia Serbia
- Large industry representatives: Jobst Technologies (Germany) and Methrom DropSens (Spain), Senetics healthcare group (Germany), TeleGroup (Germany), Smartex (Italy), Global Electronic Solutions (Serbia), BiFlow Systems (Germany)
- First responders organisations
- Serbian Mountain Rescue Service, Association of Mountain Rescue Organizations of B&H
- Fire fighter companies: four different profiles from
Gumpoldskirchena (Austria), Postojna (Slovenia), Rijeka (Croatia) and Pavia (Italy), and - Fire rescue training and risk management experts – IFR (Austria)
Budget
- Total project value: EUR 7,242,442.5 (100% funded under EU funds)
- Budget for the Public Fire Brigade of the City of Rijeka: EUR 78,125.00
Financed within
Horizon 2020 – EU Research and Innovation Programme
Official web site
Contact person
Dario Gauš, deputy commander
Public Fire Brigade of the City of Rijeka
Krešimirova 38, Rijeka
tel: +385 91 4801153
e-mail: dario.gaus@vatrogasci-rijeka.hr