In emergencies, those living in elder care facilities are often forgotten, or don’t receive assistance that aligns with the help those with mobility issues may require. In seeking new ways to help in these situations, members of UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences carried out an exercise simulating both an earthquake and fire occurring at an elder care facility during a global pandemic to test out the use of smart sensors and Internet of Things technologies in helping to locate and evacuate residents. Testing was conducted using a university facility, with volunteers from nursing, medical, pharmacy and public health programs playing the roles of those requiring assistance, with residents from the local Walnut Village Requirement Community in attendance to provide comments and recommendations.
“People living in elder care communities are often overlooked in the context of disasters, and there’s a lack of a system to provide accurate and actionable information to effectively conduct triage and provide comfort and care in an emergency,” says Salina Venkatasubramanian, UCI professor of computer science, of the importance of the exercise.
Says Debbie Infield, executive director of the Walnut Village Retirement Community, of the results of the exercise, “This will be helpful in finding missing persons. Ultimately, in an evacuation, we’re going to do what we need to do. We’re going to go into every single room, every common area, but this is going to tell us if we’ve missed somebody. This also happens in a nonemergency situation when we can’t find a resident, so I think it’s incredibly helpful.”
Source:
https://news.uci.edu/2022/10/14/disaster-drill-aims-to-aid-the-elderly/
