Move over St Bernard ... there's a new rescuer in town!
Anyone who's brave enough to ski down an 80-degree vertical drop of pristine, virgin snow will tell you their greatest fear is being caught in an avalanche. Thanks to a team of researchers at the Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (Fraunhofer IML), they can rest assured that even if they do get buried in snow, they will be found. A new geolocation system makes use of signals from Galileo - the satellite navigation system being developed by the EU and the European Space Agency (ESA). The risk of being caught in an avalanche intensifies in areas that are off the beaten track. Avalanches are triggered by an external stress on the snow pack. Skiers, snowmobile drivers and even explosive work can kick-start an avalanche with devastating results. This novel system will enable rescuers to locate avalanche victims carrying an avalanche transceiver or a mobile phone. Its beauty lies in the fact that it can locate a buried victim with precision - to within just a few centimetres of their location. People stuck underneath the white stuff will survive only if they are found quickly and precisely. Experts say the maximum survival time is 30 minutes, so time is of the essence. Avalanche victims are most likely to survive if uninjured group members launch an immediate search, but the victim must be wearing an avalanche beacon for optimal results. 'In the experience of rescue teams, not everyone actually carries beacons,' explained Professor Wolfgang Inninger of Fraunhofer IML. 'However, nearly everyone has a cell phone. This is why we decided to enhance our automatic geolocation system that works with Galileo, the future European satellite navigation system.' The system's enhancement was made possible by adding two new components to the 'avalanche navigation system' (ARN), a mobile phone location function and software capable of determining the position of the buried victim on the basis of local measurements. According to the Fraunhofer team, the rescuers measure the field strength of the signal transmitted by the mobile phone or beacon at three to five reference points starting from the approximate location of the buried victim. The ARN then uses a very accurate calculation algorithm to locate the source of the signal, and in turn the location of the victim. The researchers point out that what is central in such a situation is the position relative to the rescue team's starting point rather than the absolute position relative to global coordinates, because there may be measurement errors. Rescuers obtain information on the direction and distance between their location and that of the victim without delay. The researchers are using the GATE Galileo test and development environment in Berchtesgaden in the German Bavarian Alps, where transmitter antennas installed on six mountain peaks simulate the Galileo signals in order to develop their system. The team said they will combine these signals (and real ones) after 2012 with signals from existing satellite navigation systems including the Russian GLONASS (global orbiting navigation satellite system) and the US-based GPS (global positioning system). Signals will also be added for error estimation and correction, they said. Research institutes, universities and regional enterprises are working together with the Berchtesgaden mountain rescue service and the police to get this project off the ground.
Countries
Germany