QUEBEC CITY, Nov. 6, 2024 /CNW/ - Professor
Working with private-sector partner
"This award recognizes the results we've achieved with our partners over the past decade to help Canadian first responders be the best they can be. It's both humbling and exciting to see our stress detection tools being used by front-line professionals like nurses, police officers, and public safety officers to directly improve mental health and indirectly make Canadians' lives better," says Professor Falk, Scientific Head of the
"These results show that Canada is at the forefront of applying signal processing and AI for the benefit of society," adds the researcher who is also a member of the
"Today, there are a host of connected apps—on watches, for example—that promise they can read our psychological state and emotions from measurements such as heart rate," adds Professor Tremblay, who is also Director of the
Technological advances bring cognitive challenges
With the rise of smart cities around the world, smart urban security has emerged as a field, where sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) systems are deployed around the city to allow security forces to handle incidents and coordinate emergency response by fire and police departments, first responders, and private operators. Typically, these systems are connected to an integrated operations control centre that provides real-time decision support and manages incident response resources.
However, as technology advances, control centre operators are facing numerous cognitive challenges like information overload, multitasking, interruptions, and fatigue, all of which place stresses on operators' cognitive systems and reduce the efficiency with which their complex set of tasks is performed. What's more, first responders like police officers, firefighters, and paramedics are also exposed to a combination of physical and mental factors that contribute to high mental workloads, stress, and fatigue, increasing the risk of errors that in many cases can be life-threatening.
Tools at the service of society
Professors Falk and Tremblay collected important datasets that enabled the development of cognitive AI models to predict the OFS of first responders, as well as parameters like their stress, anxiety, fatigue, and mental workload. The partners then used these models to quantify the impact of different strategies on reducing officer stress, as well as to monitor OFS levels while responders are in the field.
The models have been deployed and used by the Canadian Space Agency, the RCMP, Public Safety Canada, and the Canadian Air Force to keep Canadians safe. The developed tools have also been used in hospitals to track nurse and doctor burnout, as well as to monitor patients who were quarantining at home alone during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Synergy Awards for Innovation are an annual award to highlight innovation and the benefits of joining forces to make the most of Canadian ingenuity.
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