Long-distance monitoring of physiological and environmental parameters for emergency operators

The recent disaster provoked by the earthquake in middle Italy has pointed out the need for minimizing risks endangering rescuers' lives. An European Project called ProeTEX (Protection e-Textiles: MicroNanoStructured fiber systems for Emergency-Disaster Wear) aims at developing smart garments able to monitor physiological and environmental parameters of emergency operators. The goal is to realize a wearable system detecting health state parameters of the users (heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, position, activity and posture) and environmental variables (external temperature, presence of toxic gases and heat flux passing through the garments) and remotely transmitting useful information to the operation manager. This work presents an overview of the main features of the second prototype realized by ProeTEX with particular emphasis to the sensor's body network and the long distance transmission of signals.