SCUBA divers carry out decompression stops while ascending to the surface to allow their bodies to naturally get rid of the unwanted nitrogen. Divers can also be decompressed in decompression chambers to remove excess Nitrogen. Over the years dive tables have been used to provide guideline information about required decompression times during the ascent of a dive and also about required rest times between two successive dives. When used faithfully these tables help in planning safe dives to avoid 'the bends'.
One of the modern items of diving gear is a dive computer. A dive computer is a sports gadget that is worn on the divers' wrist (looks more like a wrist watch than a computer) to continually monitor their dives. A dive computer continuously records data such as depth and ambient temperature about the dive. It can also generate a dive table on the fly and compare the recorded data against the table data to inform divers about required decompression stops. They therefore ensure that divers are continually informed to perform safe dives.
Dive computers record dive logs which contain time series of dive depth and tissue saturation. These data sets can be useful to:
- clinicians - to diagnose decompression illness
- diving Instructors - to evaluate learners' dives and to provide feedback
- dive supervisors - to monitor dives
In this project we develop techniques to produce textual (English) reports of dive data recorded by dive computers. The computer generated report will contain the following information
- Issues across multiple dive profiles such as:
- rapid ascent incidents
- necessary and unnecessary stops
- Unsafe dive profiles with special patterns such as square and reverse profiles:
- square
- saw-tooth
- reverse