Safer below-ground tourism

Today, there are more than 3 600 underground tourist attractions worldwide, more than half being in Europe. A tailored technological safety monitoring system for underground tourist attractions may help improve safety and risk monitoring. The EU-funded project UNDERSAFE, a nine-member consortium, aimed to develop such a system. The technology was intended to be easy to use and maintain, and also to automatically and continuously monitor safety and environmental conditions. The project concluded in September 2013 after two years.

The study team began with surveying the needs of more than 800 potential users. The data were used to characterise the types of activities and visitors that such attractions host. The information also provided a basis for hazard analysis, including the kinds of accidents that have occurred. The project concluded that no country has specific rules for underground activities, and that pan-European regulations should exist.

Based on the survey, UNDERSAFE successfully developed a system based on RFID and Zig Bee wireless communication technologies. The system consists of access point (AP) modules located at the tops of walls, including sensors monitoring the underground environment and nearby vibrations, in addition to other sensors. Visitors wear additional nodes, which communicate with the stationary AP modules, and receive information from them.

The system further includes a long list of additional components or sub-systems, either developed or customised by the study group. Examples include mobile RFID tags, various sensor elements, plus software components such as a database, an expert system and various processing algorithms. Additional software work included sophisticated management interfaces and communication sub-systems.

UNDERSAFE developed a system that improves safety monitoring and alerts in underground tourism settings. The system also offers economic benefits to European tourism and European small businesses.