Enhancing Situational Awareness in Emergency

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A new project will develop and implement a system to facilitate the coordination among responders and improve civil emergency management during natural disasters across the Western Balkan region. The project is supported by the NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme and the US Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate (DHS S&T).

When disaster strikes, good communication and effective coordination among responders is key to ensure appropriate emergency management. The new project based on a software platform will develop and deploy a system in the Western Balkans to enhance situational awareness and help coordinate a response to incidents. Once in place, the new technology will allow responders to share all kinds of information about an incident, including the GPS location or images, via mobile devices.

According to NATO’s website, the SPS project will support capacity-building of emergency response and management in the region. The four-year effort will also feature an annual demonstration in the Western Balkans to test the system and integrate standard operating policies with emergency response organisations.

The technology used in this project is based on the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS), developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL) in collaboration with DHS S&T in the United States. NICS is a software platform that facilitates collaboration among emergency response agencies in case of incidents.

“Often sharing even the most basic information on the location and scale of the disaster is complicated by the lack of interoperability between the myriads of technology tools used by governments at national, regional and local levels,” explained Dan Cotter, DHS S&T Director of First Responders Group. “This can make international collaboration difficult and slow. Tools such as NICS offer solutions to these types of problems.”

So far, NICS has been used in the United States in over 400 incidents, including natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, wildfires, but also search and rescue operations, and large public events such as marathons.

The SPS project will allow to further develop the NICS system and implement it in the participating countries in the Western Balkans, tailoring it to the needs of the region.

Young scientists in particular will be involved in the project to customise and enhance the capabilities of the technology.