Military Performance and Health Monitoring in Extreme Environments
Abstract
The Netherlands Defence Organization aims at an optimal deployment of their personnel. However, during missions such as in Afghanistan soldiers encounter adverse and extreme environments and have to sustain their performance for several days, sometimes approaching or exceeding the limits of their capabilities and health. Therefore, in 2008 a 4-year Defense Research Program was initiated on 'Military Performance and Health Monitoring'. This program aims at developing knowledge on physical and cognitive sustainability during military operations in extreme environments. In return this knowledge will be used to develop (real-time) performance and health monitoring systems for individual operational readiness. To judge individual operational readiness, commanders merely have to rely on subjective observations. Technological developments enable (real-time) assessment of the physical and cognitive state of individual soldiers under operational circumstances. To define and predict individual readiness, commanders can benefit from decision support tools. Knowledge from NATO HFM-132 (RTG) was used to define and develop a mobile field lab to assess physiological and cognitive performance during military operations. Combined with environmental data and observational measures, this field lab has been applied to gather data during training courses for the Air Mobile Brigade and the Marines. These data and data from future investigations will be used to build a multi-parameter model for predicting operational readiness. This model will serve as the basis for the commander support tool. Furthermore research will be done on new ambulatory measurement techniques as well as the validation of applied methods using gold standards and laboratory research. Other topics covered in this research program are; the data-processing, the user interface, and the presentation of information to the user. The research program will also address issues as operational feasibility, ethical consideration
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA567946
Entities
People
- Bertil J. Veenstra
- Pierre J. Valk