Calamity & Emergency Relief Aid (CERA)

Mission

Facilitating the swift location of survivors in times of disaster.

The challenge

With the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the utter devastation and fatality of natural disasters have emphatically reaffirmed themselves. After such disasters, time is of the essence, and first aid must be provided as swiftly as possible. 80% of survivors trapped underneath the rubble of a collapsed building can still be rescued alive within 48 hours of the collapse. After 72 hours pass, however, the survival rate decreases exponentially. Hence, it is of critical importance that emergency services are able to quickly and effectively locate survivors amidst the rubble to maximise the survival rate of such disastrous events.

The solution

Our goal is to develop the idea of a device/application that traces survivor data and shares it with nearby emergency services. These services can utilise this data to implement a more efficient strategy for rescue operations after disasters and thereby increase the survivability of victims. One method to accomplish this is by designing a smartphone application or wearable that can be activated by user input or the presence of life signs after a known disaster. A different approach would be to design building-specific devices that track nearby signs of human life after the building has collapsed.