The main objective of the LOCCATEC project is the design and realisation of a system, which would make available quickly and cost-effectively to the rescue teams reliable information on the presence (or not) of people in each closed space of the building during its collapse. The project will result in complete prototype system, tested and evaluated.

In a product cycle, this will represent the end of the applied R&D phase, making available results that can be exploited for the industrialisation phase, where the miniaturisation of the ASICS and the optimisation of the production costs will take place. Moreover, the User Interface will be ready and usable, but, aiming to a broader market, localisation in each country will have to be performed.

Civil Protection is the obvious application area for LOCCATEC, aiming to an improved management of the consequences of collapses of buildings due to catastrophic events, natural (e.g. earthquakes, floods, landslides) or provoked by man (e.g. gas explosions).

When deployed, LOCCATEC will enhance significantly the effectiveness of the rescue management and operations by providing a tool to perform a quick survey of the disaster site to detect and locate trapped people and plan the subsequent rescue operations in the most effective way. As part of an overall emergency response system, it would allow personnel, equipment and information to be dispatched where it is most needed and assist in setting rescue priorities and planning the rescue effort quickly and efficiently.

It must be considered that the citizens’ security is a priority for any country, therefore it is expected a major effort in promoting the widest adoption of LOCCATEC with the political backup of Public Authorities and Governments.

The principle of autonomous surveillance (as an alternative to the classical, centrally administrated) such as applied in LOCCATEC is very attractive for a wide range of surveillance and environmental monitoring applications, where the use of low cost devices is desirable. This would allow for different strategies in monitoring potential or actual emergencies, leading to the implementation of networks of ‘sensors’ distributed over a large area and reporting in real-time or after the event to a hierarchical chain of Units.

The high potential in LOCCATEC could be exploited either by private investor aiming to the design and production of a new category of devices and by environmental organisations taking the lead of a new process of environmental emergencies monitoring and management.

The LOCCATEC project has been co-funded by the EC (FP5) – IST  Programme. It started in 2004 and ended in 2005. IES Solutions has coordinated the project.