MIRA TELECOM to develop portable kit for detecting trapped and buried people in ruins with EU financ

Nov. 12, 2012 - PRLog -- The aim of the RescueCell project is to develop a novel accurate location system based on mobile signal measurements, in order to create a cost effective and portable kit, easy to be installed and used. This will be a fetmocell based kit capable of operating in any country worldwide where the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) is available. Japan and South Korea are the only two countries where the GSM is not supported.

The consortium partnership will form a technical and supply chain for the system consisting in manufacturers/ providers of technical equipment, experts in IT solutions for emergency services, integrators and distributors.

Mira Telecom, as integrator and supplier of equipment for fire departments, will integrate the hardware along with the software into a real commercial product and will then distribute RescueCell all over Europe to national/ regional organizations, police, fire departments, militaries and SAR teams.
Research made by the 8 partner consortium before submitting the project has shown that snow avalanches cost more than 150 lives worldwide. In Europe since 1900 avalanches took 1,200 lives, affected 13,199 persons and cost 775 million Euro in damage. Earthquakes had even more horrendous effects having taken 18,864 lives from 1998 to 2009 and causing damage in the range of 29 billion Euro in Europe.

The time factor is of essence as the probability of survival sinks to 19% after 72 hours due to dehydration and/or hyperthermia experienced by victims trapped in collapsed buildings and to 34% after 19 minutes for persons buried by avalanches due to suffocation.  The major problem with the existing search and rescue existing technology is that the probability of recovering live victims is extremely low.

The RescueCell system is expected to lead to significantly faster searches in SAR (Search and Rescue) missions resulting in finding more survivors and also in reducing the related SAR cost proportionally.  Therefore there is an urgent need for developing an unique, easy-to-use, cost efficient, safe and reliable tool in order to locate victims who are buried under debris or snow, providing accuracy of their position in a swift way.  The 8 partner consortium carried a research and found that at the moment there is no single technology available on the market able to meet these requirements.

The mobile location algorithm technique will be implemented and initially tested with RescueCell hardware and will finally be tested and validated in two case studies, a collapsed building and an avalanche provoked in Greece and in France.

Mira Telecom (www.miratelecom.ro) – a company with 100% Romanian private capital, founded by Stelian Ilie, President of the group - with 14 years of experience on the Romanian and international market, started its activity in October 1998, with radio-communication equipment distribution. Service diversification has represented the basic principle in the company’s evolution. Mira Telecom provides today complete security, IT and telecom services, backed by an efficient and operative integrated service, which brings added value to the customers’ operations. In the past years the company has invested massively in security technology research. The company is about to finish the construction of its own research center which will be equipped with high tech lab equipment and software platforms.