UBITECH participates in the virtual kick-off meeting, hosted by the National Technical University of Athens (July 21-22, 2020), of the Search and Rescue (S&R) Research and Innovation Action, officially started on July 1st, 2020. The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 882897) and spans on the period July 2020 – June 2023. The vision of the S&R project is to design, implement and test through a series of large scale pilot scenarios a highly interoperable, modular open architecture platform for first responders. 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.
Within S&R, UBITECH develops the situation awareness model which will constitute an extendable set of main concepts such as actors, their roles and tasks during rescuer operation as well as an abstract flow of information of S&R. More specifically, the model will a) define the decisions that first responders (and other actors) make during the course of S&R operation, b) represent the types of critical information required in order to support the various actors with their tasks; and c) represent the important information flows that potentially exist between involved actors, mediated by a knowledge management system in the form of notifications, alerts and timely information supply. Moreover, UBITECH implements a knowledge based visualization support and relevant interfaces linked to the forefront such as VR and mobile interfaces to allow first responders quickly grasp the picture of the building and their surroundings during rescuer operations.
