Role for electronic nose in disaster search and rescue

The detection of human victims in mass disasters is a job not many people are capable of doing. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 9/11 and New Zealand’s White Island eruption are just some of the tragic events synonymous not just with loss of life but also the courage and professionalism of those who go in to recover bodies.

Current methods of search and rescue require physical effort and machinery – and the risk of injury to rescuers and surviving victims. Thermal imaging is possible in some scenarios but not in a building explosion or fire. Detector dogs are proficient but expensive to train and hard to deploy on site, especially if they need to be flown in.

Re-creating dogs' special ability to sniff out human remains, however, is exactly what forensic science expert Dr Maiken Ueland has done in developing a portable electronic nose with sensor technology. 

Not only will it make search and rescue safer, it will also help government agencies understand the scale of disasters so they can allocate appropriate resources for disaster relief and recovery, says Dr Ueland, of the Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). “Ultimately, too, for relatives of the victims, the technology can help provide certainty that assists in the mourning process and enables loved ones to grieve through acceptance.”

Forensic science is expanding expertise in mass disaster scenarios.
Dr Maiken Ueland

To begin with, the electronic nose was intended for quite a different task. 

“We originally started developing the electronic nose with Associate Professor Steven Su and colleagues in the School of Biomedical Engineering for the purpose of detecting illegally traded wildlife,” says Dr Ueland.

Dr Ueland’s background in understanding the chemical breakdown of human remains led her to conceive the idea of “training” an electronic nose to detect human cadavers after mass disasters. 

Odour profiling is a rapidly growing area of research and the electronic nose technology has been used successfully for breath analysis and to ascertain the freshness of meat. But current gold-standard odour-profiling methods rely on large, expensive benchtop instruments that aren’t practicable to use outside a laboratory. 

“Although forensic science is expanding expertise in mass disaster scenarios, there was no one applying electronic nose technology in this space. I wanted to develop an olfaction machine that can detect airborne chemical compounds present in decomposition – and that can be portable,” says Dr Ueland.

“My close ties with the law enforcement allowed us to trial the electronic nose alongside scent detection dogs to test its capabilities. We’re also assisting law enforcement by demonstrating when a scent is present at a scene. I hope a future iteration of the electronic nose can be used during the training of dogs in cadaver detection,” Dr Ueland says. 

A major test of the efficacy of the electronic nose came about in early 2020 and attracted international attention. Dr Ueland executed an authentic recreation of a mass disaster scenario, which saw between 30 and 50 law enforcement representatives and forensic practitioners from Australia and New Zealand take part in the exercise.

This kind of research can only be conducted at specialist human decomposition facilities, of which there are fewer than 10 worldwide. UTS’s Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER) is the only such facility in the southern hemisphere, with its work facilitated by people who volunteer to donate their bodies to science.

The technology can help provide certainty that assists in the mourning process.
Dr Maiken Ueland

“In collaboration with AFTER’s Director, Associate Professor Jodie Ward, I was allowed the unique opportunity to use whole human donors, which in turn meant I could develop a research approach that’s more realistic and practical for human death investigations,” says Dr Ueland. 

The disaster was re-created to simulate a car explosion and a collapsed building, with truckloads of demolished buildings used at the AFTER site in the Blue Mountains. Dr Ueland was the only person who knew where the donor bodies were placed among the debris. They were left to decompose for two weeks, with odour samples collected by Dr Ueland and PhD Candidate Amber Brown using the electronic nose during that time. 

“We staged the full recovery exercise over two to three days, with the participants bringing their ‘fly-in’ kits and nothing more, just as they would in a real disaster,” Dr Ueland says. “We let first responders and forensic teams organise themselves and had one of the participants operating the electronic nose to try to locate their search points before the recovery started,” she explains.

Although this was only the first pilot study and the electronic nose isn’t yet fully portable – still requiring a power cord – the reaction from participants was extremely positive.

The next step is to improve detection by testing which biomarkers should be targeted by the electronic nose. “Then we want to get the portable version running – maybe put it on a drone or a walking unit – so it can be self-operated via remote control. We’re also working on the idea of having multiple devices and thinking about how they can communicate with each other,” Dr Ueland says.

“Once we’re able to do that, the possibilities are endless on what we can use this device for.”

Dr Maiken Ueland is a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow and ARC DECRA Fellow at UTS and Deputy Director of its Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research.

The Young Tall Poppy Science Awards are an initiative of the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. They recognise excellence in research and enthusiasm for science communication.