JOHN THURGOOD ON HOW THE CAT^® S60 IS MAKING HERZLIYA MARINA A SAFER PLACE

Location: Herzliya Marina, Israel

Date: Friday 2nd September 2016

I was fortunate to meet Amir Zander (Herzliya Port Manager) and Eyal Harush (Herzliya Harbour Maintenance Manager) today at Herzliya Marina. I had been introduced by a partner of ours in Israel and I wanted to know about their work a little more and to understand the challenges they face on a daily basis.

Little did I know that just the previous evening there was an incident in the waters very close to the hotel I was staying at. I could see the flares being used to help locate objects and to warn traffic in the area but at the time had no idea what was going on as I contemplated the universe with a colleague of mine whilst tucking into another delicious round of hummus.

As it transpired, this would be one of the main topics of conversation today. Unfortunately, what had happened was that a swimmer had run into difficulties with a rip-tide and the commotion that ensued was the authorities attempting to locate and recover the swimmer. Sadly this time a life was unable to be saved, and as well as lamenting the impact of this on their family and loved ones, it made me think about the incident and whether the thermal capabilities of the Cat^® S60 could assist.

Eyal had mentioned that he felt the thermal capabilities might provide an additional way to easily and quickly identify and aid situations like these where rapid response is required, and the technology in the Cat S60 could help. He felt to have this kind of technology in a smartphone was unique and unequaled.

In future I hope the Cat S60 can help in locating people in distress at sea. It also reminded me of cases closer to home where in the UK it seems that an unprecedented number of deaths have occurred this year related to rip-tides. Indeed, just recently such an incident occurred in Camber Sands, Kent which is close to where I have family.

Amir is in the process of testing the Cat S60 now for this purpose and other interesting harbour-based uses: such as when there was a burst water pipe within the harbour wall but no easy way of determining the whereabouts of the leak. Amir and Eyal with the help of Lior managed to use the thermal imaging of the Cat S60 to clearly show where the temperature difference was in the harbour wall and used this to work out where to dig and repair. The costly and long-winded alternative was to manually dig in different places until they found the problem.

Eyal goes through over 5 smartphones every 6 months (yes, 6 months!), so apart from the fact that they needed a ruggedised device capable of surviving long periods underwater and with long battery life, the thermal imaging of the FLIR^®camera was extremely useful.

To the Emergency services (and harbour teams) wherever they may be, thank you for looking after us.

Thanks to Amir and Eyal at Herzliya Marina: 1 Hatsedef St, PO Box 9, Herzliya 46764. http://www.herzliya-marina.co.il

Additional thanks to Sergey Pazdnikov of aquamarina (aquamarina.co.il)