Report from the last meeting of the DigiRescueMe project participants, October 23-25, 2024, Eskişehir-Kütahya, Turkey

On October 23-25, 2024, the last of the planned meetings within the ending international project with the acronym DigiRescueMe took place. The meeting venues were the cities of Eskişehir and Kütahya. The meeting was attended by representatives of all project partners except the University of Salerno from Italy, whose representatives could not make it to the meeting for reasons beyond their control. On the part of AGH, the project coordinator in Poland, Prof. Tomasz Niedoba, and Assoc. Prof. Agnieszka Surowiak, PhD, Eng., were present.

The meeting began on October 23 with an informal welcome dinner at the Gaga restaurant in the city of Eskişehir. It is worth mentioning here that the name of the city means “Old Town” in direct translation, which can be confusing because it is one of the most modern and wealthy cities in Turkey. It is also considered to be very European-like. In addition, it is also one of the thriving industrial centers, mainly processing, agricultural, chemical and automotive industries. The center is also known for the extraction of sepiolite or the production of the world-famous halva.

The main part of the meeting began on October 24. The venue of the meeting was Dumlupinar University inKütahya, which has already hosted us at other scientific meetings. At the same time, it is also the seat of the project leader, whose coordinator is Prof. Oktay Şahbaz. During the meeting, all aspects of the project were presented and discussed, as well as what still needs to be done by the end of the calendar year. The project ends on 31.12.2024, so there are two months left to complete any missing elements. However, the most important parts of the project have been completed, and they include, above all, VR software, with the help of which 25 mine rescue scenarios were prepared, containing about 400 different types of risk. It is worth mentioning that these scenarios were developed entirely by a Polish team. In addition, a unified course for future rescuers has been created, which can be used both in vocational schools, universities, as well as during training conducted in mine rescue stations. This course consists of three main modules, prepared in five language versions (English, Polish, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish) and they are “Risk analysis”, “Rescue” and “Mental wellbeing”. Of course, the whole thing is closely related to rescue operations carried out in the mining industry and its preparation was preceded by research based on interviews and the Focus Groups method used among pupils, students, teachers and active mine rescuers.

The “Rescue” module has been prepared by AGH. In addition to the modernized content, Artificial Intelligence was an important element used in the educational material. In all language versions prepared by the Polish team, AI has been introduced, which significantly improves the quality and reception of the presented content. It was created with the help of the computer program “Elai.io”.

Thursday’s session lasted until late in the evening, and at the end of the day, the hosts invited the participants of the meeting to the Antre Gurme restaurant for dinner.

The meeting resumed the next day, where it was determined what activities are still necessary to be carried out by the end of 2024. The Polish side must organize at least two more training courses, intended for pupils and students and teachers. The planned completion dates for these tasks are the end of November 2024. In addition, a final report on the entire project must be prepared by the end of January 2025.

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