SOTERIA

SOTERIA, named after the Greek spirit of safety and deliverance, is a rescue bracelet developed as my Bachelor thesis at NABA. Worn every day like a fitness tracker, it spends almost all of its life asleep: a solar cell tops up the battery and a heart-rate sensor on the wrist keeps a quiet life signal going. When a building collapses, the band wakes up and sends an SOS, and the bands of everyone nearby form a mesh that relays vitals, identity fragments and neighbour reports out of the rubble.

First responders use the Soteria app to list every band in range, trigger a global SOS or a find-me ping, and follow a localization map that narrows down where a person is buried. The same app sets a band up in the first place: name, date of birth, pre-existing conditions and an emergency contact are written to it over Bluetooth, so the information is on the wrist when the network is gone.