Energy Expenditure of Disaster Relief Operations Estimated Using a Tri-Axial Accelerometer and a Wearable Heart Rate Monitor

Nao Koizumi, Hitomi Ogata, Yutaro Negishi, Hisashi Nagayama, Miki Kaneko, Ken Kiyono and Naomi Omi ()
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Nao Koizumi: Institute of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8574, Japan
Hitomi Ogata: Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima 739-8521, Japan
Yutaro Negishi: Institute of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8574, Japan
Hisashi Nagayama: Institute of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8574, Japan
Miki Kaneko: Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Osaka 565-8531, Japan
Ken Kiyono: Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Osaka 565-8531, Japan
Naomi Omi: Institute of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8574, Japan

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 9, 1-11

Abstract: The management of nutrition, food, and health for disaster relief personnel is one of the crucial aspects for carrying out effective rescue activities during large-scale natural disasters, such as a big earthquake, flooding, and landslide following heavy rainfall or man-made disasters, such as widespread fire in industrial areas. Rescue workers, such as fire fighters and rescue teams who work on the disaster relief operations, have to work long, hard, and irregular hours that require energy (both intake and expenditure), with especially altered eating patterns. Reliable estimates of the energy expenditure (TEE) for such disaster relief operations have not been fully established. Here, we propose to clarify the energy expenditure for each type of large-scale disaster activity conducted by fire fighters. Thirty fire fighters (survey participants in this research) who participated in the simulation training of large-scale disaster activities wore tri-axial accelerometers and heart rate monitors during training; and, post-training, 28 fire fighters submitted complete activity record tables. An estimation formula combining tri-axial accelerometer and heart rate monitor data was used. Additionally, energy expenditure per hour (excluding resting energy expenditure: REE) (per average body weight of participants) was calculated for 10 types of large-scale disaster response activities. We propose utilization of these data as a reference value for examining the TEE of firefighting and rescue operations in future large-scale disasters.

Keywords: rescue activities; fire fighter; energy expenditure; tri-axial accelerometer; wearable heart rate monitor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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