abstract: Suction stabilized floats have been implemented into a variety of applications such as supporting wind turbines in off-shore wind farms and for stabilizing cargo ships. This thesis proposes an alternative use for the technology in creating a system of suction stabilized floats equipped with real time location modules to help first responders establish a localized coordinate system to assist in rescues. The floats create a stabilized platform for each anchor module due to the inverse slack tank effect established by the inner water chamber. The design of the float has also been proven to be stable in most cases of amplitudes and frequencies ranging from 0 to 100 except for when the frequency ranges from 23 to 60 Hz for almost all values of the amplitude. The modules in the system form a coordinate grid based off the anchors that can track the location of a tag module within the range of the system using ultra-wideband communications. This method of location identification allows responders to use the system in GPS denied environments. The system can be accessed through an Android app with Bluetooth communications in close ranges or through internet of things (IoT) using a module as a listener, a Raspberry Pi and an internet source. The system has proven to identify the location of the tag in moderate ranges with an approximate accuracy of the tag location being 15 cm. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Engineering 2020

No description available.

Mercantile Law / Mini Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Mercantile Law / LLM / Unrestricted

<p> </p> <p>A search and rescue (SAR) operation requires a rapid, accurate, and effective response to provide the missing person the best chance of being rescued. Personnel from the local area are likely to be closest to the location of the missing person, be familiar with the area, but they may not be adequately trained, experienced, or equipped with the best tools to effectively locate, identify, and retrieve the missing person. Thus, most SAR operations rely on a mix of trained personnel and volunteers. Among the trained personnel, there is a wide variance in proficiency, experience, and access to technology, leading to some emergency response agencies being better prepared than others. Volunteers, on the other hand, could be very helpful, but are largely untrained and inexperienced, reducing their inherent likelihood of success. The primary challenge to successful SAR operations is the lack of consistently trained, adequately equipped, and diversely experienced personnel. Despite the lack of desired resources, SAR operations must be completed rapidly and emergency responders often turn to volunteers. In response to this challenge, the use of unmanned aerial systems, UAS, in small volunteer teams was proposed. Available, off-the-shelf UAS technology can be used to simplify training with the help of affordable advanced technology, and thereby enable rapid, accurate, and effective SAR operations.  </p> <p>The following research was executed in the form of three independent, but related, studies. The first study focused on the efficiency of a UAS-equipped SAR operation; the second study focused on the accuracy of a UAS and image analysis software-enabled SAR operation; and the third study tested the ability of novice volunteers to learn and apply the new technologies (UAS plus image analysis) efficiently and effectively. The goal of these studies was to determine whether affordable commercial, off-the-shelf technologies could be used to enhance the efficiency and effectivity of SAR operations. The experimental methodology used specifically designed simulations of SAR operational scenarios. Two operational tactics were tested: (a) Equip the SAR team with UAS and (b) equip the SAR team with UAS and image analysis software. The specific scenarios selected were similar in complexity, but different enough to minimize the transfer of learning from the first study to the second study.  Finally, the reference times for manual SAR operations were compared against UAS and computerized image analysis software-assisted methods. The results of the proposed studies determined whether off-the-shelf UAS and image analysis technologies could be used to enable rapid, accurate, and effective SAR operations. </p>

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Saving the life of another person cannot be measured in monetary terms. It is also impossible to describe the satisfactiori of carrying out a successful rescue to anybody. However, the disappointment and sense of failure when a rescue mission fails and a life is lost, is devastating. Many rescue workers, including those of the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), have experienced this overwhelming sense of failure. Rescue workers often dwell on failed rescue attempts, wishing that they could have arrived on the scene earlier or knew where to start looking for people. The fact that lives are still lost, despite the best efforts of rescue workers, points to the need to improve on life saving techniques, procedures, equipment and technology. Providing the NSRI with a workable tool to help them manage and allocate resources, plan a rescue, determine drift speed and distance or create search patterns, may one day be just enough to save one more life. With this goal in mind, a search and rescue application, called RescueView, was developed utilising ArcView 3.2a. This application was specifically designed for use by the NSRI, and it will be used as a command centre in all NRSI control rooms and for all rescue efforts. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Om die lewe van 'n ander persoon te red, kan nie in geldwaarde gemeet word nie. Dit is ook onmoontlik om aan enige iemand die bevrediging van 'n suksesvolle redding te beskryf. Die terleurstelling en gevoel van verlies is egter baie groot wanneer 'n reddingspoging misluk en 'n lewe verloor word. Menige reddingswerkers, insluitend dié van die Nasional Seereddingsinstituut (NSRI), het al hierdie oorweldigende gevoel van mislukking ervaar. Reddingswerkers tob dikwels oor onsuksesvolle reddingspogings en wens dat hulle vroeër op die toneel aangekom het of geweet het waar om vir mense te begin soek. Die feit dat lewensverlies steeds plaasvind, ten spyte van reddingswerkers se beste pogings, dui op die behoefte om lewensreddingstegnieke, -prosedures, -toerusting en -tegnologie te verbeter. ( Deur die NSRI met 'n werkbare instrument te voorsien, wat hulle kan help om hulpbronne te bestuur en toe te wys, 'n redding te beplan, dryfspoed en -afstand te bepaal of soekpatrone te skep, mag eendag dalk net genoeg wees om nog 'n lewe te red. Met hierdie doel in gedagte is RescueView, 'n soek- en reddingsapplikasie, deur middel van ArcView 3.2a ontwikkel. Hierdie applikasie is spesifiek ontwerp vir gebruik deur die NSRI en dit sal as beheersentrurn in alle NSRI kontrolekamers en vir alle reddingspogings gebruik word.

The thesis, which is divided into a practical and a theoretical part, examines the level of knowledge among the members of the Fire Brigade of the South Bohemia region. The theoretical part characterizes the Fire Brigade of the Czech Republic, its mission and tasks, its position within the Integrated Emergency System. The theoretical part deals with the issues of stagnant, flowing and frozen water hydrology, physiology related to staying in cold water and the possibilities to use rescue and protective aids. I also present a list of dangerous situations rescuers are exposed to when rescuing on water surfaces. Results of a questionnaire research are processed and evaluated in the practical part. The questionnaire deals with the issues of stagnant, flowing and frozen water hydrology, the basic theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills of the members of the South Bohemian Fire Brigade. The most important findings resulting from the performed research are summarized in the conclusion of the work. I evaluate the aims and hypotheses set at the beginning and propose a possible solution of the problems in question.

The journey towards insolvency is often a gradual process, thus enabling a business or person in most circumstances to be aware of the danger ahead if adequate precautions are not taken. This position is recognized by the Statute, hence the definition given to a financially distressed company under the Companies Act1 to mean inability to pay all its debts within the immediately ensuring six months or the likelihood of going insolvent within the immediately ensuring six months. Rescue mechanisms are therefore aimed at ensuring that when faced with the signs of insolvency, a business for instance can be properly driven to become solvent again or at least restructured to achieve better realization of assets.2 Indeed, providing alternatives to insolvency is fast becoming a global trend as many countries now appreciate the need to give a person or business experiencing difficult times, the opportunity to rise again without necessarily going through the rigors of liquidation or sequestration. South Africa is not left out in the quest to assist over-indebted persons and provide them with alternative measures beside insolvency. The National Credit Act3 for instance seeks as one of its objectives to prevent over-indebtedness and where it occurs address same by means of debt rearrangement. This is in addition to certain provisions of the Magistrate CourtP a g e Act4 which allow a debtor the option of applying for an administration order and where granted make payment in instalments. The Companies Act also provides for business rescue as well as compromise between company and creditors.5 This research in brief analyses the above mentioned laws in South Africa that provide alternative measures for financially troubled or over-indebted debtors as applicable to corporate and non-corporate entities. The research considers whether these laws are sufficient to assist debtors in financial crisis, the effectiveness of these laws, challenges as well as loopholes taking into consideration what is applicable in other jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The end of this research contains recommendations that would assist in achieving effective rescue mechanisms or alternatives to insolvency beneficial to both corporate and noncorporate entities in South African. Copyright / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Mercantile Law / unrestricted

This thesis studies the performance of search dogs trained to locate the live scent (live only dogs) and compares their performance to that of search dogs trained to locate either live or cadaver scent depending on the verbal cue given by the handler (cross-trained dogs).

High-risk, time-critical situations require trust for humans to interact with other agents even if they have never interacted with the agents before. In the near future, robots will perform tasks to help people in such situations, thus robots must understand why a person makes a trust decision in order to effectively aid the person. High casualty rates in several emergency evacuations motivate our use of this scenario as an example of a high-risk, time-critical situation. Emergency guidance robots can be stored inside of buildings then activated to search for victims and guide evacuees to safety. In this dissertation, we determined the conditions under which evacuees would be likely to trust a robot in an emergency evacuation. We began by examining reports of real-world evacuations and considering how guidance robots can best help. We performed two simulations of evacuations and learned that robots could be helpful as long as at least 30% of evacuees trusted their guidance instructions. We then developed several methods for a robot to communicate directional information to evacuees. After performing three rounds of evaluation using virtually, remotely and physically present robots, we concluded that robots should communicate directional information by gesturing with two arms. Next, we studied the effect of situational risk and the robot's previous performance on a participant's decision to use the robot during an interaction. We found that higher risk scenarios caused participants to align their self-reported trust with their decisions in a trust situation. We also discovered that trust in a robot drops after a single error when interaction occurs in a virtual environment. After an exploratory study in trust repair, we have learned that a robot can repair broken trust during the emergency by apologizing for its prior mistake or giving additional information relevant to the situation. Apologizing immediately after the error had no effect. Robots have the potential to save lives in emergency scenarios, but could have an equally disastrous effect if participants overtrust them. To explore this concept, we created a virtual environment of an office as well as a real-world simulation of an emergency evacuation. In both, participants interacted with a robot during a non-emergency phase to experience its behavior and then chose whether to follow the robot’s instructions during an emergency phase or not. In the virtual environment, the emergency was communicated through text, but in the real-world simulation, artificial smoke and fire alarms were used to increase the urgency of the situation. In our virtual environment, we confirmed our previous results that prior robot behavior affected whether participants would trust the robot or not. To our surprise, all participants followed the robot in the real-world simulation of an emergency, despite half observing the same robot perform poorly in a navigation guidance task just minutes before. We performed additional exploratory studies investigating different failure modes. Even when the robot pointed to a dark room with no discernible exit the majority of people did not choose to exit the way they entered. The conclusions of this dissertation are based on the results of fifteen experiments with a total of 2,168 participants (2,071 participants in virtual or remote studies conducted over the internet and 97 participants in physical studies on campus). We have found that most human evacuees will trust an emergency guidance robot that uses understandable information conveyance modalities and exhibits efficient guidance behavior in an evacuation scenario. In interactions with a virtual robot, this trust can be lost because of a single error made by the robot, but a similar effect was not found with real-world robots. This dissertation presents data indicating that victims in emergency situations may overtrust a robot, even when they have recently witnessed the robot malfunction. This work thus demonstrates concerns which are important to both the HRI and rescue robot communities.

Since the move of Guatemala´s capital from the Panchoy Valley to the Ermita Valley, the archaeological remains were doomed to be destroyed and 200 years later this could not be more true. Urban development is erasing the traces of a rich cultural past now hidden under modern houses, malls and football fields. Although the Cultural Heritage Law establishes that archaeological remains must be protected, the same law allows sites to be destroyed if they are excavated first. This has lead to an increase of the “Archaeological Rescue Projects”, where time and pressure restrict the scientific nature of the excavation. In this work I explore the theory behind rescue projects and how ethical issues can play a big role in th way rescue archaeology is been done in Guatemala. Also, i explore the history of the rescue projects in Guatemala to demonstrate how important is to have a strong cultural law but also a strong sense of responsibility towards our profession. I use the example of rescue projects, Santa Isabel, to highlight the importance of scientific oriented investigations but also the common mistakes that can be done in these projects. Finally, a proposed a series of steps that can improve the quality of the rescue projects with hopes that they can be implemented in other parts of Guatemala. / text