Our story - Global Smart Rescue

Our history

The birth of the project

Upon his return from the United States, Bertrand, our talented systems developer, informed me that the New York City Council was looking for new solutions to increase the reactivity and efficiency of its emergency teams in case of crisis. They were looking for an efficient post-disaster communication system.

Thierry Fayard founder & technical consultant at GSR

"Immediately, my mind started to converge on this idea. After a long analysis, two issues came to the fore".

Accuracy and relevance of information

A rescue team must receive precise information in order to send the most appropriate human and material rescue response (form of rescue and adapted medical needs).

How many people are injured? Do they have food? Do they have water? What are their exact location coordinates? All these answers had to be provided to the rescue teams to increase their efficiency and enable them to make optimal decisions.

Cost of the solution

This decision-making aid had to be affordable.

In search of an innovative solution

Immediately my mind started searching for an innovative solution. A list of predefined data, collected and analyzed with AI in our lab in real time, could be reported directly to the rescue teams, allowing them to react with the best solution."

The birth of the LAB™*

The idea was born: a compact, smart, resilient box, a LAB™*, installed on site to collect crucial data in the event of a disaster. My enthusiasm and imagination were overflowing

The LAB would allow...

...Decision-making based on a real vision of what is happening on site!

...With this concept, it would be enough to install and broadcast around our small alert boxes of sensitive sites, to permanently monitor its environmental data and to intervene immediately in case of emergency.

...And when a disaster occurs, we would have the advantage of already having collected, correct, accurate data before, during and after the disaster!

...With this solution, the quality of information for the decision-making process would be optimal. We would have solved the complex issue of blind and difficult rescues, rescues without in situ data!

The crucial question: but how to have access to the data collected by our little box when the traditional communication networks do not work anymore?

LAB™ had to rely on something else, but what? If an environmental hazard was detected, or if the power, WIFI, or GSM networks went down, LAB™ would immediately go into alert mode and use its autonomous battery.

It would collect and transmit its data continuously for 3 days non-stop.

It would also allow to send and receive text messages with its internal WIFI hubspot integrated. So, on the box side we were good.

However, this question of data collection remained unresolved...

Collecting data with drones?

Bertrand's brilliant idea

Easy! he says. Let's send drones on site to collect our data!

Drones collect radio frequency imagery. We thought we had found it. Unfortunately, the Quadrivision study, made us abandon this solution. While it was a genius idea, and it is and remains a more than excellent solution for industrial disasters, it could not work for our concept. Drones cannot fly in extremely high winds and these winds are present in 80% of natural disasters worldwide. These statistics were too high to ignore. We were back to where we started! We got back to work.

An IOT solution via satellite?

"We all firmly believe that when we work for the benefit of others, despite the countless challenges, everything falls into place to help that person move in the right direction.

In 2018, as part of my work at CNES, we asked a French start-up called USpace to conduct a study on a new constellation of nano-satellites. We wanted to check if a private IOT solution through a satellite developed by them specifically for us could be considered."

The investment cost, estimated in millions of euros to provide this specific service, was unfortunately too high.

But the idea of using satellites to collect our data was the right one. We then looked at existing satellite structures that allow for satellite communication at a much lower cost, a cost that will be even lower in the near future.

Satellite and New Space, our winning strategy

We had finally solved our last two problems: data collection when all the usual communication networks are destroyed and its attractive cost!
This new generation of satellites being already launched and to be launched in the future, it meant that the project had definitely become feasible, affordable and marketable!

So we decided to build our clever little box : LAB™!

Disaster management redefined, a revolution in the way we save lives

Today, LAB is up and running, its technical side is fully completed.

It has reached TRL 6 (technology readiness level). It has been tested and is waiting to be industrialized. The GSR project required many hours of work, including many human, technical and personal challenges, but today we are satisfied to have built a technology designed for the greater good of society, ready to become the new indispensable tool to help when we are in danger.

Inspired by the Americans, it seems only natural to return the favor by marketing our invention on their territory, where many natural disasters occur every year.

Our future challenges

To continue this journey to the next level by continuing to develop our technology building blocks to make tomorrow a safer world.

We never stop innovating at Global Smart Rescue because at the heart of our motivation is people.

Thierry Fayard - Co-Founder