RESCUER

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The RESCUER project, “first RESponder-Centered support toolkit for operating in adverse and infrastrUcture-less EnviRonments,” aimed to enhance the operational capacity and safety of first responders (FRs) in challenging conditions. By adopting the “HERO” (enHanced nEw eRa first respOnder) concept, RESCUER developed a comprehensive toolkit offering:

Sense Augmentation: Augmented vision modules were designed to improve visibility in adverse conditions such as darkness, rain, or fog. These modules utilized Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning to cancel out environmental impediments, thereby enhancing FRs’ visual capabilities.

Precise and Infrastructure-less Self-Positioning: Recognizing the necessity for accurate location identification in environments like commercial buildings, underground areas, or infrastructure-less zones, RESCUER developed visual-based self-localization tools. These tools ensured real-time, precise positioning without relying on existing infrastructure.

Cognitive Support and Multi-Sense Augmented Reality (AR) Interfaces: To prevent cognitive overload and ensure optimal performance, the project introduced specialized health monitoring systems. These systems tracked vital signs and assessed cognitive states, enabling FRs to maintain peak psychophysical conditions. The integration of multi-sense AR interfaces provided intuitive information displays, enhancing situational awareness without causing distraction.

Robust Ad-Hoc Intra-Team Communications: In scenarios where traditional communication infrastructures were compromised or nonexistent, RESCUER established ad-hoc communication networks. These networks facilitated seamless data and verbal exchanges among team members, ensuring continuous coordination during operations.

Additionally, RESCUER introduced the concept of a “building black box,” enabling the extraction of environmental information on-site during disasters. This feature provided FRs with real-time data about their surroundings, further enhancing their decision-making capabilities.

By integrating these advanced tools and technologies, RESCUER significantly improved the efficiency, safety, and situational awareness of first responders operating in adverse and infrastructure-less environments.

Project Τitle: first RESponder-Centered support toolkit for operating in adverse and infrastrUcture-less EnviRonments

Project Duration: 1/7/2021 – 30/6/2024

Project URL: https://rescuerproject.eu/

Project Framework & Funding: H2020-EU.3.7. – Secure societies – Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens – € 6 984 803,75

Scientific coordinator (UNIWA): Prof. Ch. Patrikakis

Consortium – Partners:

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain) – Coordinator

ENGINEERING – INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA (Italy)

CS GROUP – France (France)

THEON AISTHITIRES MONOPROSOPI AEVE (Greece)

BRAGI GMBH (Germany)

PANEPISTIMIO DYTIKIS ATTIKIS (Greece)

UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH (United Kingdom)

ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS (Greece)

INOV INSTITUTO DE ENGENHARIA DE SISTEMAS E COMPUTADORES INOVACAO (Portugal)

DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUR LUFT – UND RAUMFAHRT EV (Germany)

Elliniko Idryma Evropaikis kai Exoterikis Politikis (HELLENIC FOUNDATION FOR EUROPEAN AND FOREIGN POLICY) (Greece)

SERVICE DEPARTEMENTAL INCENDIE ET SECOURS DE LA SAVOIE (France)

I.S.A.R. GERMANY STIFTUNG GGMBH (Germany)

SERVICIO MADRILENO DE SALUD (Spain)

COMUNIDAD DE MADRID (Spain)

ISEM-INSTITUT PRE MEDZINARODNU BEZPECNOST A KRIZOVE RIADENIE, NO (Slovakia)

ELLINIKI OMADA DIASOSIS SOMATEIO (Greece)

OSTERREICHISCHES ROTES KREUZ (Austria)

ECOLE NATIONALE SUPERIEURE DES OFFICIERS DE SAPEURS-POMPIERS (ENSOSP) (France)

FUNDACION CENTRO DE TECNOLOGIAS DE INTERACCION VISUAL Y COMUNICACIONES VICOMTECH (Spain)

Research Publications / Results / Patents

  1. Alvarez Calderon, M. (2023a, November 13). Proyecto RESCUER: Valoración de la carga cognitiva en un entorno controlado de laboratorio. 16th International Congress of Clinical Psychology.
  2. Alvarez Calderon, M. (2023b, November 13). Proyecto RESCUER: Valoración de la salud mental de los primeros intervinientes. 16th International Congress of Clinical Psychology.
  3. Álvarez Calderón, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G., Navarro Santos, S., Redondo Lozano, M., Valeriano Martínez, J., & Alba Carmona, B. (2023, February 21). Proyecto RESCUER: Nuevas tecnologías al servicio de la emergencia, valoración Psicopatológica de primeros intervinientes. VI Congreso Internacional de Intervención e Investigación en la Salud. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8881876
  4. Álvarez Calderón, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Izquierdo González, Martinez, Redondo Lozano, Maria, Cindora Sanz, A. M., & Merino Regio, B. (2022). RESCUER: New technologies that improve the work of first responders in hostile environments: Cognitive load assessment. VRISE2022 12th IMEKO-TC17 International Workshop on Risky Interventions and Environmental Surveillance, Belgium.
  5. Alvarez Calderon, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G., & Valeriano Martínez, J. (2024, May 23). Aportaciones de la psicología clínica al Proyecto RESCUER: realidad aumentada aplicada a situaciones de emergencia. IV Congreso Internacional y XXIII congreso nacional de SEPC-ANPIR, Cádiz.
  6. Álvarez Calderón, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Valeriano Martínez, J., & Alba Carmona, B. (2023a). Proyecto Rescuer: Valoración de la carga cognitiva en el uso de nuevas tecnologías en primeros intervinientes. In Nuevos horizontes para la investigación en salud desde un enfoque integrador (pp. 227–234). Asociación Universitaria de Educación y Psicología (ASUNIVEP). https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8881876
  7. Álvarez Calderón, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Valeriano Martínez, J., & Alba Carmona, B. (2023b, February 21). Proyecto RESCUER: importancia de la divulgación de resultados. VI Congreso Internacional de Intervención e Investigación en la Salud. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8881876
  8. Alvarez Calderon, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Redondo Lozano, M., Navarro Santos, S., & Alba Carmona, B. (2023, June 7). Proyecto RESCUER. Nuevas tecnologías aplicadas a situaciones de emergencia: Valoración de bioseñales y carga cognitiva. XXXIII National Congress SEMES.
  9. Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Alvarez Calderon, M., Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G., Valeriano Martínez, J., & Redondo Lozano, M. (2023, June 7). Incremento de la eficacia y seguridad de los equipos de emergencias prehospitalarios usando tecnología inteligente. XXXIII National Congress SEMES.
  10. Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Álvarez Calderón, M., Valeriano Martínez, J., Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G., & Redondo Lozano, M. (2023, 20/5). PROYECTO RESCUER: Importancia de las nuevas tecnologías para mejorar el trabajo y la respuesta de los primeros intervinientes en medios hostiles. VII SEMERGEN congress, Barcelona Spain. https://semergen.es/congresocatalunya/
  11. Dahlke, D., Drakoulis, P., Fernández García, A., Kaiser, S., Karavarsamis, S., Mallis, M., Oliff, W., Sakellari, G., Belmonte-Hernández, A., Alvarez, F., & Zarpalas, D. (2024). Seamless Fusion: Multi-Modal Localization for First Responders in Challenging Environments. Sensors, 24(9), Article 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24092864
  12. Dahlke, D., Kaiser, S., & Bayer, St. (2023, May 28). Self-Localization: A Proposal to Equip First Responders with a Robust and Accurate GNSS Device. 20th International ISCRAM Conference. https://doi.org/10.59297/QQLO9872
  13. Di Maro, A., Azpiroz, I., Biain, X. O., Longo, G., & Olaizola, I. G. (2023). Overcoming Adverse Conditions in Rescue Scenarios: A Deep Learning and Image Processing Approach. Applied Sciences, 13(9), Article 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13095499
  14. Dimitrios, I., Ioanna, G., Dimitris, U., Iosif, V., Petros, D., Konstantinos, K., Panagiotis, K., & Christos, C. (2022, October 1). Visual computing and Radar tools for improved situational awareness in Search and Rescue operations. SafeThessaloniki 2022, Thessaloniki, Greece. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7635809
  15. Frasiolas, P., Reppas, A., & Zarpalas, D. (2024). Lightweight single image dehazing utilizing relative depth information. Proceedings of 32nd International Conference on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision 2024WSCG 2024.
  16. García, A. F., Biain, X. O., Lingos, K., Konstantoudakis, K., Hernández, A. B., Iragorri, I. A., & Zarpalas, D. (2023). Smart Helmet: Combining Sensors, AI, Augmented Reality, and Personal Protection to Enhance First Responders’ Situational Awareness. IT Professional, 25(06), 45–53. https://doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2023.3335901
  17. Gkika, I., Pattas, D., Konstantoudakis, K., & Zarpalas, D. (2023). Object detection and augmented reality annotations for increased situational awareness in light smoke conditions. Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference, 231–241. https://idl.iscram.org/files/gkika/2023/2521_Gkika_etal2023.pdf
  18. Gutiérrez, Á. (2023, December 12). Biosignals monitoring of first responders for cognitive load estimation in real-time operation. (No. 13). Article 13. 2nd International Conference on Clinical Psychiatry and Mental Health, Paris.
  19. Gutiérrez, Á., Blanco, P., Ruiz, V., Chatzigeorgiou, C., Oregui, X., Álvarez, M., Navarro, S., Feidakis, M., Azpiroz, I., Izquierdo, G., Larraga-García, B., Kasnesis, P., Olaizola, I. G., & Álvarez, F. (2023). Biosignals Monitoring of First Responders for Cognitive Load Estimation in Real-Time Operation. Applied Sciences, 13(13), Article 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13137368
  20. Iliadis, D., Dovas, V., & Vourvachis, I. (2023, 21/10). First RESponder-Centered support toolkit for operating in adverse and infrastrUcture-less EnviRonments –. ICAR Congress 2023.
  21. Izquierdo González, Martinez, Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Álvarez Calderón, M., Valeriano Martínez, J., & Alba Carmona, B. (2023, March 8). First RESponder-Centered support toolkit for operating in adverse and infrastrUcture-less EnviRonments. II congress of health emergencies of the Community of Madrid, Madrid. https://www.comunidad.madrid/en/noticias/2023/03/10/celebrada-ii-jornada-emergencias-sanitarias-comunidad-madrid
  22. Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G., & Navarro Santos, S. (2022). Proyecto RESCUER: como convertir a los heroes en superheroes. XXXIII National Congress SEMES.
  23. Kaiser, S., Sand, S., Linkiewicz, M., Meißner, H., Baumbach, D., & Berger, R. (2023). An Overall First Responder Tracking and Coordination Framework. IT Professional, 25(6), 38–44. https://doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2023.3339449
  24. Kanlis, A., Vanian, V., Karvarsamis, S., Gkika, I., Konstantoudakis, K., & Zarpalas, D. (2024). SynthRSF: A Novel Photorealistic Synthetic Dataset for Adverse Weather Condition Denoising: Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, 567–574. https://doi.org/10.5220/0012397700003660
  25. Karavarsamis, S., Doumanoglou, A., Konstantoudakis, K., & Zarpalas, D. (2022). Cross-Stitched Multi-task Dual Recursive Networks for Unified Single Image Deraining and Desnowing. 2022 IEEE 8th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/WF-IoT54382.2022.10152113
  26. Karavarsamis, S., Gkika, I., Gkitsas, V., Konstantoudakis, K., & Zarpalas, D. (2022). A Survey of Deep Learning-Based Image Restoration Methods for Enhancing Situational Awareness at Disaster Sites: The Cases of Rain, Snow and Haze. Sensors, 22(13), Article 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22134707
  27. Kasnesis, P., Chatzigeorgiou, C., Doulgerakis, V., Uzunidis, D., Margaritis, E., Patrikakis, C. Z., & Mitilineos, S. A. (2024). Introducing an indoor object classification dataset including sparse point clouds from mmWave radar. Scientific Data, 11(1), 842. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03678-2
  28. Kasnesis, P., Chatzigeorgiou, C., Feidakis, M., Gutiérrez, Á., & Patrikakis, C. Z. (2024). TranSenseFusers: A temporal CNN-Transformer neural network family for explainable PPG-based stress detection (submitted). Elsevier Biomedical Signal Processing and Control.
  29. Kasnesis, P., Toumanidis, L., Burrello, A., Chatzigeorgiou, C., & Patrikakis, C. Z. (2023). Feature-Level Cross-Attentional PPG and Motion Signal Fusion for Heart Rate Estimation. 2023 IEEE 47th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), 1731–1736. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC57700.2023.00267
  30. Larraga, B., Ruiz Bejerano, V., & Gutiérrez, Á. (2023). Cognitive Load measurement by using a concurrent multitasking simulation game. In XLIV Jornadas de Automática: Libro de actas: Universidad de Zaragoza, Escuela de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, 6, 7 y 8 de septiembre de 2023, Zaragoza (2023rd ed., pp. 59–64). Servizo de Publicacións. Universidade da Coruña. https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.9788497498609.059
  31. Larraga-García, B., Ruiz Bejerano, V., Blanco, P., Navarro, S., Alvarez, M., Oregui, X., Azpiroz, I., Chatzigeorgiou, C., Olaizola, G., Alvarez, F., & Gutiérrez, A. (2024). Effect of multitasking on working memory components, performance, bio-signals and its use on cognitive load for first responders. (Under review). IEEE Access.
  32. Larraga-García, B., Ruiz Bejerano, V., Oregui, X., Rubio-Bolívar, J., Quintana-Díaz, M., & Gutiérrez, Á. (2024). Physiological and performance metrics during a cardiopulmonary real-time feedback simulation to estimate cognitive load. Displays, 84, 102780. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.displa.2024.102780
  33. Paliodimos, E. N., Papadopoulos, F. G., Uzunidis, D., Patrikakis, C. Z., & Mitilineos, S. A. (2024). A UWB Radar and Machine Learning-Based Tool for Detecting Victims Through Foliage in Search and Rescue Operations. 2024 13th International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1109/MOCAST61810.2024.10615740
  34. Redondo Lozano, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Alvarez Calderon, M., Navarro Santos, S., Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G., Cindora Sanz, A. M., & Merino Regio, B. (2022, June 7). RESCUER: New Technologies that improve the work of responder first responders in hostile environments. VRISE2022 12th IMEKO-TC17 International Workshop on Risky Interventions and Environmental Surveillance. International CNRNE, Belgium.
  35. Redondo Lozano, M., Blanco Hermo, P., Alvarez Calderon, M., Navarro Santos, S., Valeriano Martínez, J., & Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G. (2023, June 7). Estudio de parámetros fisiológicos para valorar la carga en primeros intervinientes. XXXIII National Congress SEMES.
  36. Uzunidis, D., Kasnesis, P., Margaritis, E., Feidakis, M., Patrikakis, C. Z., & Mitilineos, S. A. (2022). Real-Time Human Detection Behind Obstacles Based on a low-cost UWB Radar Sensor. 2022 IEEE 8th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/WF-IoT54382.2022.10152170
  37. Uzunidis, D., Margaritis, E., Chatzigeorgiou, C., Patrikakis, C. Z., & Mitilineos, S. A. (2023). A Dataset for Aftermath Victim Detection Behind Walls or Obstacles Using an UWB Radar Sensor. 2023 12th International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1109/MOCAST57943.2023.10176448
  38. Uzunidis, D., Mitilineos, S. A., Ponti, C., Schettini, G., & Patrikakis, C. Z. (2023). Detection of trapped victims behind large obstacles using radar sensors: A review on available technologies and candidate solutions. 2023 IEEE Conference on Antenna Measurements and Applications (CAMA), 1025–1030. https://doi.org/10.1109/CAMA57522.2023.10352910
  39. Valeriano Martínez, J., Blanco Hermo, P., Navarro Santos, S., Alba Carmona, B., Álvarez Calderón, M., Redondo Lozano, M., & Izquierdo Gonzalezz, G. (2023, February 21). Uso de nuevas tecnologías en medios hostiles. VI Congreso Internacional de Intervención e Investigación en la Salud. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8881876
  40. Wright, P., Asani, I., Pimenta, N., Chaves, P., Oliff, W., & Sakellari, G. (2023). Infrastructure-Less Prioritized Communication Platform for First Responders. IT Professional, 25(06), 29–37. https://doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2023.3338450
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