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IN-PREP

Both natural and manmade crises are changing in scale, frequency and ferocity. Many of these crises do not stop at country borders. The combination of the impact of climate change, cyber-attacks and targeted terrorist activity demand an urgent improvement in the response to transboundary crisis management. Through IN-PREP, tools will be developed to respond to these urgent challenges and support those with the onerous responsibility of managing these life-threatening crisis situations.

Project description

A new three-year project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, will seek to build a system that can better respond to urgent natural and manmade crises. IN-PREP, which was launched in Athens on 27 September, will research and develop tools to respond to three urgent challenges related to transboundary crisis management:

• Sharing response planning across borders and agencies
• Improved sharing of accurate and relevant information in real time, and
• Improved coordination of critical and scarce resources

The IN-PREP consortium is made up of 20 partners from 7 countries in the EU. It comprises seven crisis management practitioners and technology providers, guided by feedback from practitioners, and led by the Institute of Cummunication and Computer Systems (ICCS) from Greece.

Aerial images using drones

The DLR Institute of Flight Guidance is a technical partner within the consortium and will provide aerial images to facilitate a common operational picture. A drone, controlled by the ground control station U-Fly of the Institute, receives mission requests (such as area to be covered, requested image mode, etc.) and sends optical or infrared pictures and videos back to the ground. The aerial imagery is then processed and provided to other project partners’ tools using a central data provision system.

Goals

Within IN-PREP, a training platform will be created, which will facilitate creation of scenarios and training of practitioners. This training platform will be tested and validated in six table-top exercises and demonstrations, consisting of different crises scenarios:

• CBRN accident in Rome, November 2018
• Cruise ship evacuation in Rome, June 2019
• Massive flooding in the Netherlands, October 2019
• Terrorost attack in Belfast, December 2019
• Earthquake in Rome, February 2020
• Forest fire in Rhodes, April 2020

Furthermore, a handbook of operations will be delivered covering the training process of practitioners through various crisis scenarios.

Video overview of how the toolset works

The IN-PREP project has received funding from Horizon 2020 (H2020/2014-2020), the European Union’s Programme for Research and Innovation under grant agreement n° 740627.