2nd Call for applications (CLOSED)

Are you driving innovation in Crisis Management? Are you developing and deploying socio-technical solutions for first responders? Do you provide innovations being a game changer for operational, tactical and strategic decision makers? We need you to share your innovations with the Crisis Management community! DRIVER+ organises a series of trials which investigate innovative solutions under simulated crisis conditions. With this call for application, we invite you to participate to the second event.

Why should you apply?

Participating in the DRIVER+ portfolio of solutions features great opportunity to spread out your product to the European Crisis Management community. Within the trials, you will be in contact with a large group of actors who are working and researching in the domain. Thereby, your solution gains visibility to a wide audience not only within DRIVER+ but also, as part of the portfolio of solutions, to other interested parties in and beyond Europe. The trials furthermore create a controlled environment simulating a crisis scenario to test and assess solutions, which are currently under development, providing you with new insights to advance in the design.

Participating in the trial will enable you to:

  • Get a better understanding of the needs of the crisis management practitioners
  • Test the integration of your solution into a complete crisis management system, based on a scenario developed by experts
  • Get first hand feedback from operational that have tested your solution in a controlled environment and scientifically sound setting

What are we looking for?

We are looking for solutions. A solution is a building block that contributes to a crisis management function. Solutions can be technologies, tools, methods, concepts, or recommendations that regard potential technical, organizational, procedural, legal, policy, societal, or ethical improvements to the European Crisis Management legacy.

Scenario

A large forest fire occurs, threatening wildland urban interfaces in the south of France in a Mediterranean environment.

The main mission objective is to “suppress the fire”, in order to (according to French doctrine):

  1. Protect people, including dealing with casualties
  2. Protect goods and infrastructures
  3. Protect the environment

A support from the EU Civil Protection Mechanism is requested.

Developments from initial situation

Additional man-made and natural events will complete the scenario in order to increase the coordination needs and exchanges of information at horizontal level between agencies and countries, as well as vertical level along the command chain. These events will be defined at a latter stage, to challenge the selected solutions.

Main issues to which solutions should contribute

We are especially looking for solutions addressing the following capability needs:

  • Merging and synthetizing disparate date sources and models in real time (historic events, spreading models, tactical situation, critical assets map, etc) to support incident commander decision making;
  • Exchanging crisis-related information among agencies and organizations (also related to as interoperability), including between fire-fighters and emergency medical services (when medical care is not provided by firefighters units);
  • Ensuring a common understanding of the information exchanged (terminology, symbology) by all crisis managers involved in the response operations;
  • Offering common doctrine or procedures supporting international cooperation in aerial firefighting;
  • Incorporating accurate and verified information from multiple and non-traditional sources (e.g.  crowdsourcing and social media) into response operations
  • Overcoming the limited capacity to deal with large numbers of severely burned casualties at member state level (in particular by increasing coordination efficiency);
  • Identifying the location of injured/trapped/deceased casualties in large forest fires.

Trial Setup

Because of widespread effects of this kind of incidents and limited possibilities to conduct this kind of exercise in real-life conditions, the trial will be organised as a table-top exercise based on a simulated environment.

Actors in the Trial

The scenario will require a commitment of stakeholders (end-users) from every Crisis Management level (local, regional, national and international) and from all the agencies participating in the crisis response in this specific scenario:

  • Fire-fighters: from France, and (aerial) reinforcement from other countries, terrestrial units from other countries if there is a cross border aspect in the scenario
  • Police (for urban areas) from France or also one other country if there is a cross-border aspect
  • Gendarmerie (for rural areas)
  • Medical services organisation
  • Decision makers and authorities (for all countries involved in the scenario)

All levels of the command chain will be played from the field command post (with the Incident Commander role) up to the zonal and national operational centres, as well as the European Response Coordination Centre.

Further actors will be involved based on the scenario developments and the additional side events.

Deadline is 26th March, 2018

THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED, STAY TUNED FOR OUR NEXT CALL FOR APPLICATIONS !

How to participate?

1. Read the call for application.

2. Answer 10 questions about your solution carefully.

3. Submit your application.

4. Wait until 27th April for the review results.

ANY QUESTION? GET IN TOUCH WITH US

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