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158 points nizarmah | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.452s | source

A couple of months ago, I built this app to help identify people stuck under rubble.

First responders have awesome tools. But in tough situations, even common folks need to help.

After what happened in Myanmar, we need something like this that works properly.

It has only been tested in controlled environments. It can also be improved; I know BLE is not _that_ effective under rubble.

If you have any feedback or can contribute, don't hold back.

1. rapjr9 ◴[] No.43555174[source]
BLE might be useful above ground in some situations, e.g., a person who is unable to stand and is located in a large field of tall grass, or someone who is hiding from an attacker and wants to silently request help.

For the specific case of burial under rubble it might be better to work on sensing sounds rather than using radio broadcasts. If the person can move they may be able to tap on concrete with another piece of concrete. Using three or more phones (plus BLE or WiFi for timing coordination) placed on the rubble it might be possible to triangulate the location of the tapping. While there are professional (expensive) versions of this (like the heartbeat detector mentioned above), giving the capability to everyone could be useful. Adding the BLE emission/detection couldn't hurt and when the trapped person runs the app it could give them instructions to maximize their chances of detection. For tapping those instructions might be to tap three times once every five minutes to minimize the physical energy required. That would mean the three sensing phones would need to wait 5 to 10 to 15 minutes to do detection and acquire a location. Tapping on stones could work by itself since people can put their ears to the rubble and listen for the tapping, so the main benefit of the app might be just to tell the person what they should do in their situation (tell the trapped person to tap 3 times every five minutes, tell the rescuer to listen for 3 taps occurring every five minutes, providing a timer to indicate the 5 minute intervals could be useful too). Five minutes might not be optimal, some research would be needed on that, and it may depend on the energy level of the trapped person so perhaps the sensing cell phones should be left in place for hours or days. Ideally all phones would have this as an emergency app that would provide advice and help with BLE beacons, timers, cellular calls, sensing, and whatever in any situation.

In general this seems like a difficult problem and worthy of some extended research.

replies(1): >>43555367 #
2. nizarmah ◴[] No.43555367[source]
+1 to sound, I'm planning to research that thanks to all the helpful HN comments like yours :D

I find the "instruction app" a little limited because a person needs to be conscious, they need to be calm and collected to remember to open the app, and their phone needs to be accessible.

In its current state, providing instructions is better than just broadcasting BLE which will be weakened and lost by rubble.

In my country, a lot of first responders still rely on asking people to scream if they can hear them. Anyone unconscious would be discovered days later...

There has to be some way of providing an automated signal of life.

The comments about the physics limitations are pretty awesome. They make me wonder if we can assist it in any way... I learned about passive resonators recently. I know they have a short distance transmission, but maybe if they were part of the building material?

I need to start by learning more about the physics. I know I'm limited by it, but maybe there's window we can walk through instead of the door.