Authors
Agnieszka Sprońska, Michał Bryła, Łukasiewicz-PIAP, agnieszka.spronska@piap.lukasiewicz.gov.pl
Aim of the project
The main purpose of ASSISTANCE project was twofold: to help and protect different kind of First Responders (FR) organisations that work together during the mitigation of large disasters (natural or man-made) and to enhance their capabilities and skills for facing complex situations related to different types of incidents.
Short description of the problem addressed by this project
Nowadays, different FR organizations cooperate together facing large and complex disasters, that in some cases can be amplified due to new threats such as the climate change in case of natural disasters (e.g. big floods, large wild fires, etc.) or the increase of radicalization in case of man-made disasters (e.g. arsonist activity resulting in European forest fires, big combined terrorist attacks in European cities).
The impact of these kinds of large disasters could have disastrous consequences for the European Member States’ regions and social wellbeing in general. Moreover, each type of FR organisations (e.g. medical emergency services, firefighters’ departments, law enforcement teams, civil protection professionals, etc.) responding to these kinds of events are exposed to unexpected dangers or new threats that can severely affect integrity of their actions.
To address these problems, ASSISTANCE proposed a holistic solution that has adapted a well-tested Situational Awareness (SA) application as a core of a wider SA platform, capable of offering different configuration modes for providing the tailored information outcome needed by each FR organisation that cooperates with other ones to jointly mitigate the disaster (e.g., real time video and resources location for firefighters, evacuation routes status for emergency health services and so on).
Main results and achievements
With the developed solution, ASSISTANCE enhanced the FR’s Situational Awareness during their mitigation activities through the integration of new paradigms, tools and technologies with the main objective of increasing both protection and efficiency of FRs.
ASSISTANCE project used UAVs, Smart wearable sensors, robots, and drones’ swarms equipped with specific sensors for covering the FR-specific data needs (e.g. real time video, locations of people and objects, evacuation routes status, ad-hoc network coverage, etc.). The sensors mounted on the unmanned platforms along with the ones mounted on the FRs’ equipment was integrated in a complete SA platform that also included innovative modules to improve the users’ SA and capabilities for performing their work in a more efficient and secure manner. Additional capabilities for using drones as active FRs’ tools, instead of only as unmanned platforms for mounting sensors were also developed.
Moreover, ASSISTANCE proposed to create an advanced European training network based on the use of Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR) for increasing the FR’s capabilities according to their current training needs. This advanced training network development included tailored curricula design, immersive interfaces, adapted training methodology definition, virtual scenarios, etc.
Conclusion
The ASSISTANCE project sought to provide greater protection for emergency services by boosting their situational awareness in any given disaster. To achieve this, the project team developed and tested various data-gathering devices, such as smart wearables, robots and drones. Data from all these sensors – including real-time video, person and object location, identification of viable evacuation routes and ad-hoc network coverage – was then integrated into a centralised situational awareness platform to help the First Responders coordinate their actions quickly and efficiently.
The project has been recognised as a success story by the European Commission: https://projects.research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/en/projects/success-stories/all/harnessing-sensor-technology-boost-situational-awareness-emergencies
Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 832576.
