IA 5.7. Quantifying impacts of exposure to air pollutants from wildfires

What kind of result is this?

New tool & Recommendations

What’s the area addressed?

Advanced Technology Solutions, Emergency management

What’s the covered phase?

Detection and Response
Surveillance, Observation, Monitoring

What’s the addressed challenge?

Health effects of aerosols emitted by wildfires remain poorly quantified due to uncertainties on wildfire emissions assessment. Exposure to air pollutants from wildfires is linked to serious health effects such as respiratory and cardiovascular problems, highlighting the critical need to better understand and mitigate these impacts. This issue is particularly pronounced for firefighters, who, while performing fire control and extinguishing operations, firefighters are exposed to smoke that contains substantial amounts of known harmful pollutants. However, real-time exposure data is limited due to the challenges of monitoring in harsh conditions with non-instrusive instruments. Therefore, a key method for setting exposure limits involves using real-time measurements that can be recorded online at the control site.

What value is proposed?

Testing a new system for air quality monitoring in areas impacted by wildfire events, using sensor technologies and passive dosimeters (for VOCs and NO2). Outdoors and indoors tracked data will also help adapting current evacuation or confinement protocols. Sensors on fire fighters will also provide novel information for occupational health protocols and DSS. 

Design, developed and integrate with Tecnosylva system a wearable system to monitor in real-time firefighters. This monitoring is focus in both physiological and environmental of each firefighter and aims to have a combined health status and exposure indicator to support in real time firefighting operation manager during fire supression.

Who can use it?

Firefighters, regional governments and policymakers

What type of tool is it?

Web applications

How does it look like?

Website

This tool is…

⊠ a new tool

☐ an improved tool

What are the vision & mission statement?

A deeper understanding of the concentrations of air pollutants from wildfires is essential to developing effective mitigation strategies. This will help protect firefighters from the harmful effects of these pollutants and enhance public health and safety.

When will it be complete?

Early 2025

Documentation

TBA

This IA is implemented in the Living Lab(s)…

Catalonia, Galicia, Portugal