UWIS dive: SAR exercise
UWIS in a Search & Rescue exercise (Southwest Finland Emergency Services)
Mission: Track SAR divers during their sector search dives and record their routes. During one dive, a rescue training dummy was also tracked.
Watch the video here:
UWIS Search
Water rescue and lifting vehicles parked near the Aura river. Two rescue divers conducted sector search dives to demonstrate accurate and efficient search patterns.
Three UWIS buoys were deployed with two places on the same side as the divers and one on the opposite side. Due to city interference with GPS signals, the buoy locations were fixed manually.
The water temperature was 18°C, visibility was zero, and the maximum depth was 4 meters. Eatch
diver used double 4L air tanks, and one UWIS diver unit was attached to a tank for each diver.
During the exercise, the management team used the UWIS Tracker software for real-time dive monitoring. The UWIS Pro Case includes (optional) a robust Panasonic Toughbook G2 which is IP65-rated for water resistance and features a touch screen with a rain mode.
The maximum standard distance between the Main buoy and PC is typically 100 meters. However, with an external WLAN antenna, the range can extend to up to 1 kilometer.
The UWIS Tracker displays the divers' real-time locations, alias names and depths. The track tail length is adjustable, and background maps can be preloaded for offline use. Current options include satellite and street views.
Using the UWIS Tracker, the management team can send predefined messages to divers, monitor diver durations, and respond to automatic generated based on preconfigured settings.
The UWIS System logs all dive data, which can be exported in KML, GeoJSON or NMEA formats for post-dive analysis and reports.
The screenshot from Google Earth illustrates the routes from two dives. UWIS tracks divers' location every two seconds; in this exercise, an older generation provided an eight-second interval per diver. With newer systems, smoother tracks are achieved using two-second intervals.
This data is available immediately after the dive, enabling teams to share it with command centers directly from the field.
Rescue training dummy successfully recovered.
A UWIS diver unit can also be attached to a training dummy, allowing management to monitor the search's progress and ensure the expensive dummy is not lost during training.