Automated Thermal Injury Risk Assessment in the Dismounted Infantry Battlespace.
Abstract
Weather and environmental effects on dismounted soldiers can substantially impair mission performance and, in the extreme, may result in severe or life threatening thermal injuries. An automated real-time capability to assess these soldier system risks in the temporal and spatial domain of dismounted infantry battlespace scenarios is synergistic with larger efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of dismounted warfighters. We have completed initial integration of a suite of human thermal strain prediction models with automated real-time weather and terrain information resources. Current models predict scenario-dependent exposure limits in hot or cold environments and during cold water immersion. In June 1996 a test bed system was installed at the U.S. Army Ranger training facilities at Camp Rudder, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The MERCURY-Ranger Test Bed system uses the existing network resources and automated weather data acquisition infrastructure at Eglin to obtain required predictive model inputs such as air temperature, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation and, for the cold immersion model, water temperature and depth. Using standard Internet connections between MERCURY and Eglin's Range Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) base station computer, weather data from seven to ten RAWS stations are automatically ingested at hourly intervals. These geo-located weather data sets are then interpolated in the context of Digital Topographic Elevation Data (DTED) to provide gridded weather information at 1 km spatial resolution across a 100 by 100 kilometer Eglin area window. Individual weather parameters or predictive model outputs are then displayed over a DTED greyscale image as simple color-coded overlay products.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA320734
Entities
People
- Eugene S. Barnes
- Peter Tikuisis
- Reed W. Hoyt
- William R. Santee
- William T. Matthew
Organizations
- United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine