Into the fire: safeguarding firefighters’ lives

According to NASAExternal Link, there is always something burning on Earth. There may be controlled agricultural fires, fossil fuel combustion or wildfires started by lightning or people. And NASA would know because the organization observes actively burning fires worldwide with its Terra satellite. Sometimes there are as many as 30 fires in a 1,000 sq km area on any given day. The end products of all this burning include a mixture of gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide.

Wildfires are a growing problem. The Climate Reality ProjectExternal Link, a global network of activists leading the fight for climate solutions in Washington, DC, states that rising temperatures due to burning fossil fuels dry out vegetation, fueling bigger, more resilient wildfires.

Wildfire TodayExternal Link explains that firefighters are exposed to health hazards such as hazardous pollutants from the combustion of live and dead vegetation (smoke), ash and soil dust, and long shifts with no respiratory protection. A wildfire travels faster than a person can run.

It’s a global issue — one that Prometeo Platform S.L. wanted to address with its solution to measure firefighters’ toxin exposure.

Herrera shared his expertise about wildfires. He described his worries and his concerns about the smoke and toxic substances that the firefighters breathe constantly when they are working in a fire, including controlled burns where oftentimes firefighters don’t wear masks.

“He told us stories about his job, including about losing fellow firefighters, which made a profound impression on us,” Valero says. “We learned that that while his fire station kept data about each firefight, they were working manually in an Excel file, and only logging three data points (beginning, middle and end of the fire) from each firefighter. These data points were collected by a nurse following the firefighter in the field.”

The Prometeo team — now including three technologists, a firefighter (Herrera) and a nurse — regrouped in Barcelona. Together, they framed out the problem of the impact of toxins, the protocols for firefighters and how technology could be applied to address the issue. Then they got to work building a solution for the 2019 Call for Code challenge, the focus of which was natural disasters.

“We knew that with IoT sensors and the power of AI in the cloud, we could build a solution to monitor each firefighter in real time,” says Valero.

The Prometeo team built the prototype solution with multiple IBM Cloud services. IBM provided an IoT platform that displays information on the dashboard in near real-time. IBM® Cloudant® technology provides a fully managed IBM Cloud service database, and the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service manages the applications across multiple hosts.

Node-RED (link resides outside of ibm.com), a low-code/no-code programming tool from the OpenJS Foundation (link resides outside of ibm.com), was originally used to “wire together” the IoT hardware devices, APIs and online services. Though the original Prometeo device was created with a 3D printer, today’s version is a ruggedized smartphone and smart watch from Samsung that is worn by firefighters, who can log in to the device securely with the IBM Cloud App ID via Bluetooth.

“With this data, we know what is happening with each firefighter and we can help define individualized strategies to protect them. That is the goal of the Prometeo solution,” says Valero.

When the team entered the Call for Code challenge this time, they won the top prize.

Field testing of the Samsung devices has been performed in controlled burn conditions in Spain, and field tests are continuing around the world. To support the growth of the project, the Prometeo team have worked with IBM developers to take the original monolithic application and fulfill the benefits that come from cloud-native development. The app has been split into a handful of microservices to handle specific needs such as processing the data and building the dashboard.

There are multiple advantages to this approach. “Each microservice can be coded in the best language for the job, whether that be Python or Node JS,” says Upkar Lidder, IBM Developer Advocate on Call for Code. “It also means that for any maintenance or code run failures, only an individual component goes down, not the whole application. Now that we have multiple developers working on the project, as long as each is only working on one microservice at a time, there is less danger of one developer overwriting another’s code.”

Each of these microservices is now housed in its own Docker container managed by the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. This streamlines infrastructure management as the application scales and makes the process of porting the application from one environment to another straightforward.

“We can scale easily with the IBM Cloud technology. There are data centers worldwide so we can maintain the data securely in each region,” says Valero.

Additionally, the Prometeo team has contributed an open-source project called Pyrrha (link resides outside of ibm.com) to the Linux® Foundation (link resides outside of ibm.com) so others can contribute and help to get the solution deployed in new locations. “There are a lot of people who need this technology, and every contribution is important,” says Valero. Some of the short-term goals include analyzing toxin exposure over time and updating smartphone capabilities.

With the current smart watch set up, each firefighter is able to monitor his or her own toxin exposure. “They tend to be a group that may not be the first to step aside,” says Valero. “So I think it’s is important for them to see on the smart watch when the status is red.”

Ultimately, the goal is to have an open, flexible platform for fire departments to include their own requirements so they can build the strategies to protect their firefighters.

“We expect to have big data to show real evidence of the effect of smoke, while taking into account they physical condition and cumulative exposure of each firefighter,” says Valero.

In the next version of the Prometeo solution, the team is planning to integrate the Samsung Health API to evaluate more specific metrics from each firefighter, which could help them devise recovery strategies. For example, running on flat land and running on a hill are different and because a firefighter’s breathing is different on a hill, the impact of the same amount of smoke is worse.

“In IT, when I have a bad day, it means I am in the war room because a system from the bank has failed, and the worst scenario is that I might arrive home late,” says Valero. “But when the firefighting team has a bad day, it’s a really bad day — as you can imagine.”

Valero concludes: “Firefighters are our heroes, and even though they are very brave, I think we must use the Prometeo platform to protect them. Our dream is to have a Prometeo IoT device on each jacket or wrist of every firefighter worldwide.”