Emergency Management in Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare Applications

In recent years, there has been a global increase in the number of natural hazards which cause a heavy loss to human life and infrastructure. An effective disaster management system is needed to reduce the impacts of natural hazards on common life. The emergency responders (ER) play a major role in effective and efficient disaster management. So there is an obvious need to improve the safety of the ER by continuously monitoring their position, sensing their vital signs especially in dangerous situations.

The proposed system is a wireless wearable body area system for locating, tracking and monitoring emergency responders in harsh and remote environments. Tracking an emergency responder and monitoring their vital signs using various medical sensors is important in supporting the safety of the emergency responder. This work is the preliminary step towards the development of a collaborative real-time tracking and monitoring system for emergency responders. In this paper, we propose a design of a wrist worn wireless wearable body sensor device for localizing, tracking and monitoring an emergency responder.

Any change in the physiological parameters like blood oxygen level, blood pressure and pulse rate of the emergency responder can be easily sensed and tracked, and could be used to provide a warning when a critical event is detected. This system uses an efficient iterative localization scheme for locating the emergency responder. The system could be used to send early warning alerts, route proper medical supplies to the area required, and for communication between the responders.