Rafael Olmedo, Jose Luis Villarroel, Carlos Rueda, Juan Rico
Every year, more than 150 people fall victim to snow avalanches. The probability of survival is 90% during the first 15 minutes, but decreases quickly thereafter. The avalanche rescue systems available are limited in range accuracy and require complex usage and training. CORE has implemented a personal portable device that provides the general public – as well as mountain emergency groups, medical personnel, and rescue first responders – with an innovative safety and rescue solution for general or professional mountaineering or skiing. Based on a single hardware unit, CORE offers two operation modes: one for transmitting the locations of buried victims, and the other for accurately guiding nearby users to the corresponding positions. The resulting solution is tightly linked to previous studies and evaluations of GNSS signal propagation through snow; it also facilitates innovative navigation based on GNSS navigation performance and relative GNSS data compensation. The idea is being developed under the SICRA national research project (www.sicra.es).
Contact:
rolmedo@navsat.es
www.navsat.es
