Prometeo monitors firefighter toxin exposure

As wildfires and other natural disasters become more prevalent around the world, Prometeo protects the health of firefighters.

Elements of this solution are now available as Pyrrha, an open source project you can get involved with today.

Check out the open source projects

At a glance 

Firefighters are constantly at risk from the smoke and toxins they inhale during a blaze. Prometeo uses IoT devices to track exposure and pull firefighters from the field before their health is compromised. Winner of the 2019 Call for Code Global Challenge, Prometeo is running field tests around the world and is available as the Pyrrha open source project. 

Deployment location
The Catalonia region, northeastern Spain
Technologies used
  • IoT Platform
  • Node-RED
  • IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
  • Python
State of readiness
  • In testing

Ecosystem

Ecosystem

The Prometeo story

From the Amazon to Indonesia, wildfires are occurring more frequently and in greater size and intensity. During a wildfire, firefighters are exposed to many toxins including carbon monoxide, benzene, and sulphur dioxide. The Prometeo solution includes a health device approximately the size of an iPhone that straps to the firefighter’s arm and has multiple sensors that measure key variables, like temperature, humidity, and smoke concentration.

“You can think about a solution in your house. You can build it. You can even put it on the market, but if you don’t speak with the real end users, your product is probably going to fail.”
Josep Ràfols, Prometeo 

The values from the device are collected and transmitted over the network to an IoT platform, where the data is processed by a rules-based model. This model distills the information into a simple color-coded status on the Prometeo dashboard that the fire command center can use to monitor the health of firefighters and pull them from the field if their health is in danger.

What’s new

News article

As the world’s wildfires worsen, firefighters go high-tech to stay healthy

Case study

Read the detailed IBM Case Study about Prometeo

Video

Prometeo tests Call for Code winning solution with firefighters

Get involved in open source projects now

Whether you are a technologist interested in further developing the Prometeo solution or an organization interested in helping deploy this technology, there are multiple ways you can get involved. 

Join the community to get invited to Slack. Once you are granted access, join the #prometeo-pyrrha channel.

Check out tech for good open source projects you can get involved with today.