Inte.Ri.M. - The Internet of Things for Natural Risk Management

Inte.Ri.M. - The Internet of Things for Natural Risk Management: Researchers study new solutions against natural risk and people isolation in mountain areas on the Monte Rosa massif.

The University of Turin in conjunction with the company Scatol8 per la sostenibilità is working at Istituto Angelo Mosso, Col d’Olen (m 2900), that is part of the Monte Rosa massif, testing new electronic sensors and communication radios. Their project is to develop new solutions to prevent natural risk in mountain areas and to develop new instruments to help elder people that live in isolated areas.

The project, called Inte.Ri.M. (The Internet of Things for Natural Risk Management), deals with the adoption of new connected tools with the scope to study and possibly reduce the impact of natural disasters, as well to help aged people that lives in isolated places to connect with parents and doctors and to easily exchange data about their health situation. The evaluation and management of natural disaster risks is conducted in a systemic and integrated way, in which technical and economic variables are measured to prevent and assess, with a holistic approach, the natural risks in eco-system services.

The project has an interdisciplinary approach, with a research group of economists, mathematicians, engineersexperts in management systems, geoscientists and medical doctors of the University of Torino, linked to the Research Centre on Natural Risks in Mountain and Hilly Environments of the same University and with the support of Piedmont Region.

The core of the sensor network actually installed is the Scatol8® platform that is based on open source hardware and software not only for cost saving, but also in the view of knowledge sharing.

Our interdisciplinary proposal aims to mix our technical and economics skills to assess how much preventing disasters with sensor networks can cost and can make saving money at the same time. The use of open data that are already available are useful in the starting stage of the study and will reduce costs. 

The project will primarily consider two kind of variables: environmental ones for natural risk prevention and early warning and other ones related to human health and comfort for improve the life of isolated elderly people.

The first group can include snow sensor, extensometers, water level sensors, smoke detectors, and accelerometers. Because of the natural open scenario other important research topics are the sensors nodes power consumption optimization, the data transmission and the electronic resistance to the environmental external conditions.

For the human health topics, we have conducted some test on some volunteers monitoring some of their bodies ‘parameters at the base and on the top of the mountain. The interdisciplinary research group will try to develop a very easy to use tool for monitoring some body parameter and send data to a remote doctor.

Research team: Riccardo Beltramo, Enrica Vesce, Paolo Cantore, Sergio Margarita, Paola de Bernardi, Mario Grandinetti, Michele Freppaz, Marco Giardino, Enrica Favaro (Università degli Studi di Torino)

Please, do not hesitate to visit http://scatol8.net to know more about the project.