CAM-170

A worker on the floor, down there

The underground pump room, with the green pipework on the left and the two pump sets on the right. On the wet floor a worker lies face down, motionless, hi-vis vest on and the yellow helmet come off, a hand's width from his head. Further down, a loose tool. There is nobody else. IRIS sees that there is a person on the floor who is not moving; it does not know who they are or what has happened to them.

CAM-170 · PUMP ROOM · PERSON MOTIONLESS

What IRIS understands

What it recognises in this scene

person on the floor
helmet on the floor
tool on the floor
pump sets
control panels

What this camera measures

An alert says something is happening. The reading says how much.

3 minMotionless for
1People on the floor
0Other people in the room
47 minIn the room for
2Ways out in frame
21:05Time of the alert

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

a person ends up lying on the floor of the room and does not move for a while

Then

alert the standby crew and the site manager, with the camera and how long they have not moved
put the live picture on the screen of whoever gets the alert
repeat the alert until somebody marks it as attended

The instruction that set it up«Tell me if somebody ends up on the floor down there and does not get up, because down there you can be alone for a very long time.»

What changes

What changes for whoever answers for the site

Somebody who goes down in a pump room can be alone for a very long time, and that stretch of time decides everything. At nine at night nobody is watching that camera: there is a picture nobody sees. IRIS heals nobody and replaces no confined-space procedure: it makes somebody up top find out while it is happening, and the person who decides what to do is a person.

What people usually ask

Can it tell somebody collapsed from somebody crouched down working?

It looks at two things: the posture — lying flat on the floor rather than squatting — and above all the time without movement. A worker bent over a flange moves; somebody who has been in exactly the same position for minutes does not. How long to wait before alerting is set by the operator of the site, and it is the piece that stops it firing every time somebody lies down to look at a joint.

What if the alert turns out to be a false alarm?

You check it and you close it, and that is fine. Here the cost of looking and finding nothing is nothing like the cost of not looking: the rule is deliberately written to err on the side of alerting too much. It is not an alarm that calls anybody by itself, it is a notice on the screen of whoever is on duty, with the live picture next to it so they can decide there and then.

Is it any use for knowing who was on shift?

No. IRIS does not identify anyone: it does not recognise faces, it does not read number plates, it does not compare against any database and it does not store who anybody is. It sees a person on the floor, it does not see a particular person. Who was on shift is in the work sheet, not in the camera, and this camera is not there to keep tabs on anybody: it is there so that if someone goes down, somebody knows.

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