Smart Garments for Safety Improvement of Emergency/Disaster Operators

The main purpose of the European project ProeTEX is to develop equipment to improve safety, coordination and efficiency of emergency disaster intervention personnel like fire-fighters or civil protection rescuers. The equipment consists of a new generation of ";smart"; garments, integrating wearable sensors which will allow monitoring physiological parameters, position and activity of the user, as like as environmental variables of the operating field in which rescuers are working: both commercial and newly developed textile and fibre based sensors will be included. The garments will also contain an electronic box to process data collected by the sensors and a communication system enabling the transmission of data to the other rescuers and to a monitoring station. Also a ";smart"; victim patch will be developed: a wearable garment which will allow monitoring physiological parameters of injured civilians involved in disasters, with the aim of optimizing their survival management.