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Hot Project helps Trainee Fire-fighters
Posted: 13/12/06
The heat has been on for Otago Polytechnic Bachelor of Information Technology students Grant Helm, Stuart Matthews and Shiming Shen, but soon the New Zealand Fire Service will have a way to understand the pressures faced by trainee fire-fighters.
The trio has designed training aid software that displays captured thermal imaging video and body statistics of trainees wearing breathing apparatus in the hot fire training room at Dunedin Central Fire Station. The fire room is in blackout conditions and operates at temperatures up to 300 degrees Celsius.
The Training Officer can use the displayed data to help Trainees understand the effects of heat and stress on the human body.
Client Keith Ferris, Training Officer with New Zealand Fire Service says he hopes the use of the system will become part of standard procedure for trainee fire-fighters nationally.
Matthews and Shen will graduate this Friday at the Dunedin Town Hall. Helm, a mature student completing his qualification part-time has approximately one more year of study to complete.
A BIT project is a piece of significant industry-based work completed by a 3rd year student or team of students in association with a real life client. The public releases of a years projects is always highly anticipated; previous student work is currently serving clients from museums to architects, sportsmen to designers and retailers to educators, to name a few.
This year students have worked on a wide range of projects for clients including an interactive learning CD for the New Zealand Marine Science Centre, an interactive storybook for the Hollyford Museum Trust and a web-based database system for tracking whale observation and movements for the Marine Sciences Department at the University of Otago.