www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1759273,00.html
Watch the rescue A YOUNG girl has been saved from drowning by an extraordinary computer sy stem that keeps an eye on everybody in a swimming pool. The girl was pulled unconscious from 12ft of water at the deep end of a p ublic pool in Bangor, North Wales, when underwater cameras spotted that she was not moving and alerted a lifeguard. The lifeguard could not see the girl in the crowded pool but was able to respond to the alert within seconds. It is the first time in Britain that the Poseidon surveillance system, ma nufactured by a French company, has helped lifeguards to save a swimmer from drowning. The campaign group Swimsafekids said last night that the rescue proved that the system could save many more lives if they were in stalled compulsorily. The state-of-the-art system has been credited with saving three swimmers in France. Last year it helped to save a middle-aged German man who had a heart attack. So far, eight pools in Britain have installed the system . The girl, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was on a camping holiday run by a charitable trust near Bangor. Along with her friends she was havin g a lunchtime swim on August 24 when she got into difficulties. Karen Gibson, the lifeguard on duty, said: You cannot see people at the bottom when there are people swimming because it is so deep let alone during the summer holidays when there is so much splashing and activitie s Brian Evans, Gwynedd Council leisure officer, said that the system identi fied the girl at the bottom of the deep end quicker than the human eye . The Bangor pool is typically 1960s design with lots of windows, which cr eates a lot of glare on the surface of the water and can make it difficu lt for lifeguards to see what is going on. What is a cost like that when you can save a persons life like it did h ere? The Poseidon system, developed by the French Vision IQ company, was insta lled two years ago at a cost of 65,000. A series of cameras in and outside the pool monitor the movements of swim mers, matching the images with a database to detect those in distress or apparently unconscious. It constantly scans the pool analysing the traj ectories of swimmers. Poseidon sounds an alarm on a screen at the lifegu ard station, picturing the stricken swimmer and indicating the position. There are eight cameras in the water and another ten above the water line at Bangor. Manufacturers say the system operates as a third eye for t he lifeguard. In this case, the girl was identified and rescued within 6 2 seconds. Francois Marmion, general manager of Vision IQ, said: It is virtually im possible for lifeguards to see everything that is happening in the pool all of the time, given the warm, noisy and crowded environment in which they typically work. This is very important for us because it is the fir st time the detection system has helped lifeguards to save somebody from drowning in Britain. It is a pretty complex piece of software b ehind the system. There is no equivalent system anywhere elese in the wo rld. Poseidon has been fitted in more than 120 pools across the world, includi ng the US and Japan, and will soon be introduced in Australia. Penny Matthews, founder of Swimsafekids, has urged local authorities to b uy the system. Mrs Matthews, whose son, Nathan, drowned in the Thames Leisure Centres J ubilee Pool in July 2004, said: This proves to people that the system d oes work. It would cost only 175 per child per year to install them in all public swimming pools.
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