Smart Garments for Emergency Operators: The ProeTEX Project

Financed by the European Commission, a consortium of 23 European partners, consisting of universities, research institutions, industries, and organizations operating in the field of emergency management, is developing a new generation of ??smart?? garments for emergency-disaster personnel. Garments integrate newly developed wearable and textile solutions, such as commercial portable sensors and devices, in order to continuously monitor risks endangering rescuers´ lives. The system enables detection of 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), to process data and remotely transmit useful information to the operation manager. The European-integrated project, called ProeTEX (Protection e-Textiles: Micro-Nano-Structured fiber systems for Emergency-Disaster Wear) started on February, 2006 and will end on July, 2010. During this 4.5 years period, three subsequent generations of sensorized garments are being released. This paper proposes an overview of the project and gives a description of the second-generation prototypes, delivered at the end of 2008.