Organizer: Federico Tramarin, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Organizer: Stefano Cattini, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Organizer: Alberto Ferrari, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
The management of emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, emphasized a set of requirements and unprecedented problems for measurement systems. Such a task definitely imposes to provide answers in a short time, often directly operating in the field and with the need to integrate information from multiple sources. In-accurate, or incomplete information can lead to inappropriate choices, with potentially severe consequences in emergency situations. Smart sensors and effective measuring systems become hence essential, and in such a scenario, they should provide for high level of reliability and robustness, fast response times, self-standing capabilities, and preferably, ease of use even by unskilled personnel.
Indeed, a relevant example is the surge, in early 2020, of requests for face masks and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), that was before limited to healthcare personnel, whereas their use by the general population is fundamental to limit the spread of Sars-Cov-2. However, while requirements for healthcare professionals are well established, facing the increased demand from the population lead to issues for the lack of specific knowledge and regulations. Several Universities and laboratories responded to the request and brought into operation, in a very short time, the necessary facilities and the relative procedures for measurement, management, and reporting tests, to the aim of assessing PPE efficacy and biocompatibility. This new use allows to provide an overview of the performance of the various PPE prototypes and products that producers or importers intended to test according to the ISO standard, and in turn revealed unexpected limitations and inadequacies, also in terms of procedures and standard specifications that need further investigation.
Analogously, yet in a different direction, the need of integration of information from different sources imposes the adoption of new solutions for remote sensing and measuring systems. It is the case, as an example, of UV disinfection systems, whose wide-spread diffusion due to COVID-19 is leading to an ever-increasing pervasiveness of medium-to-small O3 sources that can be found, even inadvertently, in several diverse locations – workplaces, homes, hospitals, restaurants, and pubs. Since the exposure to O3 may potentially harm human health, emergency management highlighted the need for innovative and distributed monitoring systems for the measurement of O3 exposure. On the one side, there is the need to design and test innovative smart sensors, able to accurately provide meaningful measurement data, and to share data with other smart sensors and measuring systems. On the other side, new solutions, particularly exploiting the opportunities provided by the technology related to Internet of Things (IoT) need hence to be deployed, to allow an effective wide-area monitoring and real-time collection, integration, and analysis of data.
The aforementioned examples should be representative of a broader set of issues and unprecedented needs related to the management of emergencies. In this scenario, research contributions dealing with smart sensors, measuring instruments and monitoring solutions based on IoT technologies, as well as research related to the shortcomings of current standards are particularly welcome.
Topics of interest for this Special Session includes, but are not limited to:
- Innovative Smart sensors and measuring systems for the management of emergencies
- Design, characterization and testing of smart sensors and measuring systems for the management of emergencies
- Applications of IoT sensors and measuring systems to the management of emergencies
- Wireless Internet of Things solutions for smart sensors in emergencies management
- Bluetooth and BLE technologies for IoT measurements applications
- Long and Short-range wireless solutions, and LPWAN technologies for IoT measurements applications
- Large scale deployment of IoT sensors for monitoring applications
- Localization systems based on wireless sensor and IoT technologies
- Testing of face masks with respect to performance parameters related to breath- ability and bacterial filtration efficiency
- Testing of face masks with respect to biocompatibility parameters according to ISO 10993-1
- Testing of performance for others PPE
