Hi Tech, Wireless Help for Climbers

Mark Baard writes "Alpinists may soon be using wearable sensors and tricorder-like medical scanners to bail out their buried comrades. Computer scientists Bernt Schiele and Florian Michahelles, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, are designing A-Life, a portable device that transmits and receives avalanche victims' vital signs through snow, up to 80 meters away."

Comments

Personal Locators

[MegaFur]

Devices that give away your present position:
Are they
a) great because they let people find you when you're buried under gobs of snow, or
b) evil 'cause The System can use it to track you and make sure you're not doing something "subversive"
?

The answer, of course, is: c) both a and b.

Does anyone have a *good* way to get all of (a) (generalized that is, not just snow) without any of (b)?
(No, no, not a stupid law; I said a *good* way.)

This may increase danger

[flopsy mopsalon]

While any device that will help save lives is definitely welcome, the more bigger issue is whether these types of equipment won't actually increase the number of climbing deaths by encouraging inexperienced, overconfident, wealthy thrillseekers to try "bagging" a few "peaks".

Many experienced climbers today complain about the presence of parties of rich people seeking the latest "extreme" sport, being driven or even helicoptered in to a suitable site near a mountain's peak. Cushy base camps featuring the latest in electronic entertainment gear, heated tents, and even portable jacuzzis are not uncommon even along the slopes of such forbidding mountains as Everest and K2.

And now comes life sign monitors, so the hired help can quickly dig some careless wannabe mountaineer out of a snowbank. Complete with body-orientation signals so a stray shovel won't hit their heads. Will these truly help save lives, or only encourage the foolhardy to risk theirs?

Software making life and death decisions?

[tgrotvedt]

The article says that the software may or may not decide who to save in what order.

If I was a developer, I wouldn't touch a decision-making feature with a 20 foot pole. Even with Microsoft's (for example) legal team. Imagine the lawsuits! There would be people saying the computer made the wrong decision, and even worse, there could be bugs which make fatal mistakes.

Somehow if a loved one is dead, I really wouldn't want to hear "Well, there's a patch for that now..."

Knowing a Victim's Vitals Good For Rescuers

[n8]

I have been a ski patroller at a small local area for 9 years now and I had the unfortunate privelidge of being on the mountain when a fellow ski patroller was killed in an avalanche during Avalache Control. What nobody knew at the time was that the patroller that was killed was buried in such a way that he had no air pocket and most likely died within the first 3 minutes of being buried. Yet, the rescue team put themselves into a position where they were attempting save someone in very hazardous avalanche conditions who was actually already dead. The rescue team actually set off more avalanches accidentally and partially buried members of the team.

Rescue attempts like this are always extremely dangerous for the people involved. If they had some way of knowing whether the person was alive it would be very valuable information when trying to make the decision whether or not to risk other people's lives in order to save a buried person.