Acronym: Search and Rescue (S&R)
Project Title: Search and Rescue: Emerging technologies for the Early location of Entrapped victims under Collapsed Structures and Advanced Wearables for risk assessment and First Responders Safety in SAR operation.
Duration: 36 months (01/07/2020 – 30/06/2023)

Description: First responders and rescuers need specialized instrumentations, available to all times, easily accessible that meet stringent requirements in terms of detection accuracy, quick localization, and reduction of false alarms. The S&R project will design, implement and test through a series of large scale pilot scenarios a highly interoperable, modular open architecture platform for first responders’ capitalising on expertise and technological infrastructure from both COncORDE and IMPRESS FP7 projects. The governance model of S&R will be designed to operate more effectively and its architectural structure will allow to easily incorporate next generation R&D and COTS solutions which will be possibly adopted in the future disaster management systems. The Model will also support a unified vision of the EU role and will provide a common framework to assess needs and integrate responses. The framework will enable supportive approach using a wider range of decisional support features and monitoring systems and will also give to first responders an effective and unified vision of (a) the dynamic changes going on during event’s lifetime and (b) the capabilities and resources currently deployed in the field.

Objectives: The key objective of S&R is to develop and promote the citizen-centric crisis response framework (interoperability amongst systems and equipment, training and awareness), so that responders at all levels of command have access, familiarise with and evaluate how to deploy innovative solutions and how to optimally integrate innovative R&D products as on-demand tools into a holistic governance model for stronger coordination between local/national and EU crisis response related activities.
Other main research objectives relate to:

• Protecting the European citizen as defined in the European Internal Security Strategy in allowing for a faster and more appropriate response to natural, technological and man-made threats by using state of the art technological solutions.
• Improving the EU crisis management knowledge based by gaining a better understanding of emerging risks in Europe through better and comprehensive risk assessment and more coordinated contingency planning.
• Enhancing resource availability by designing a service to help first responders identify what resources are available to support response, what their capabilities are, and where these are located, in real time.
• Suggesting new protective clothing and advanced wearables for all first responders that protects against multiple hazards. The aim is to provide them with the ability to detect, monitor, and analyse passive and active threats and hazards at incident scenes in real time and with the ability to remotely scan an incident scene and locate signs of life.
• Creating advanced incident simulators with tools to support awareness, education and training in incident management and response so as: a) to improve individual and community preparedness, b) support the exchange of best practices and, c) facilitate the integration of future policies and technologies and testing of relevant procedures.

HIT key role and responsibilities: In Search and Rescue, CERTH/HIT has assumed the following responsibilities:

• Leading Work Package “Societal aspects of S&R”.
• Leading the work on the gap analysis for building community resilience.
• Leading the work on the data protection impact assessment process and reporting.
• Leading the work on the situational analysis & impact assessment through the development of a 3D Mixed Reality Command Centre application for field operations.
• Leading the development of an Emergency Response Health Condition Monitor for the on-site victim’s health vitals monitoring until they are safely transferred to an ambulance for further treatment.
• Contributing to the promotion of safety and security of emergency personnel through the development of an e-learning training platform.
• Contributing to the involvement of volunteer organizations and citizens through the development of a volunteer / citizen application allowing for registration of resources, skills and emergency notifications / alerts.
• Contributing to several technical tasks relevant to the integration of the technologies to the S&R platform and participating in two Use Cases for the operationalization and testing of the technologies and applications.

Contact persons:
Dr. Ioannis Benekos
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+30 211 1069 555
Dr. Evangelos Bekiaris
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+30 2310 498 453 - +30 211 1069 599