Thursday, November 27, 2008

Areva adopts UWB-location tracking for personnel safety

Ubisense Precise Real-time Location enables Areva NP to enhance personnel safety in their archive

Dortmund – 25th November 2008 – Areva NP, the world leader in design and construction of nuclear power plants has deployed in production usage the Ubisense Real-time Location System for a critical safety application within their new central archive complex in Erlangen, Germany. The system has been installed and configured by Dynamic Systems, a specialist in industrial identification and monitoring.

The archive stores plans and other printed building documents for up to 90 years as required by the regulations and laws governing nuclear facilities. In order to prevent loss or damage due to fire or water from the use of extinguishers, a system is installed which floods the archive with nitrogen. In such a situation, it is imperative to be able to immediately locate and find all personnel precisely and reliably to facilitate rapid rescue and evacuation. "It’s important for us that the location system both works reliably in emergency situations to support our rescue personnel and that it conforms to all the standards and regulations. That is the reason why we decided together with Dynamic Systems to work with Ubisense" commented Dr. Orgent Seydel at Areva.

Dynamic Systems and Ubisense have delivered a complete solution using networked sensors and active tags to Areva, providing personnel tracking within an area of 1,800m2 of the archive, which is divided into several individual rooms. Visitors and employees are registered and supplied with a location tag upon entry. "The integrated Ubisense 3D Visualisation provides a graphical indication of where the personnel are at all times. In addition an associated list is maintained, indicating in real-time exactly in which areas staff are located", explains Dr. Harald Lossau, MD of Dynamic Systems.

"Our system is seeing increasing application in personnel safety, monitoring people who work in hazardous environments", remarked Terry Phebey, VP sales EMEA at Ubisense AG. "We are very pleased to be working together with Areva NP and Dynamic Systems in this trendsetting application".

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