Advisory Committee Chair
Ragib Hasan
Advisory Committee Members
David C Schwebel
Purushotham V Bangalore
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2019
Degree Name by School
Master of Science (MS) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
Personal Safety has always been crucial to one’s life. Many different threats are faced by people in their day to day lives. These threats differ with different age groups that affect their health and well being. Different threats affect people, which include birth defects, falls, drowning, health problems, abuse, suicide, homicide, and sexual violence [39]. Many other threats occur every day but these threats are the common threats that are faced by most of the people at different ages. These threats can affect the victims in terms of the health of the person, and the physical and mental well being of the person. Victims of these threats can be anyone, so it is important to take steps toward making us and society safe. There are different ways to tackle these threats, but in the technological era, these approaches can be made more efficient for users. Some of the traditional approaches lack the advancement which can be attained by technology. Technology has to lead many different sectors to a new height and it can give a new perspective of personal safety and fight against different harms. There are various devices like the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices that can help in improving personal safety. In this dissertation work, we look at different threats to personal safety based on the individual’s age group. Different age groups are prone to different threats because the surroundings and work of an individual differ with age. Furthermore, current approaches to these threats are analyzed by comparing and contrasting based on financial cost, efficiency, battery consumption, usage capability and looks. Lastly, we cover how these approaches can be improved, in general, to improve personal safety. To demonstrate our ideas on automating personal safety, we have developed a prototype system for improving the safety of babies. We created a smart baby monitor that keeps track of the temperature and motion and pulses of the baby. This information is analyzed to determine if the baby is safe or not. The major work focuses on the determination of the accuracy of vital signs and how that can help in determining if the baby is safe or not. When the data collected is unusual it triggers an alert for parents. We posit that we can take similar approaches to automate personal safety for many different segments of the population.
Recommended Citation
Patel, Jayun, "Automating Personal Safety Among Different Age Groups" (2019). All ETDs from UAB. 2679.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/2679
