Summers in Tokyo are not only hot, they’re also extremely humid — together, those two elements are a recipe for heat-related illness. According to The Guardian, there are concerns that the upcoming Tokyo Olympics would lead to a rise in heatstroke cases, which is definitely a huge issue when medical services are already stretched too thin due to the pandemic. To help protect Olympics’ staff from heat-related illnesses, Alibaba has designed a cloud-based solution to monitor their body temperature and heart rate.
The Olympics staff will wear an intelligent device in their ear to track their stats and the environment index, which will be monitored through heat stress meters set up across the venues. That data will then be sent to a cloud-based technology that will identify the level of heatstroke risk in real time for each user. Those who are highly at risk of getting a heatstroke will receive alerts on their phones, along with recommended precautionary measures, such as drinking more water as soon as possible.
In 2020, Tokyo reported almost 200 heat-related deaths in the metropolis, so athletes and staff members are bracing for what could be the hottest Olympics yet. The city can be so hot and humid in the summer, officials had to move the 1964 games to October. Since that’s not going to happen this time around — the event will begin on July 23rd — precautionary measures like using Alibaba’s anti-heatstroke tech must be taken.