We are excited to share what has been happening with the IN-PREP project since our last newsletter.
We are now more than half-way through the project and are pleased to update on the progress which has been made. IN-PREP have already held two Table Top Exercises (TTX) in Spoleto and Savona and we are currently preparing for our third TTX which will take place this October in Kampen, the Netherlands.
These will be in addition to the three planned Demonstrations of the IN-PREP tools which will take place between December 2019 and May 2020 in Belfast, Spoleto and Rhodes which we are preparing for currently.
The purpose of these TTXs and the upcoming Demos is to test IN-PREP’s Mixed Reality Preparedness Platform (MRPP) which is an IT training platform for collaborative response planning. The MRPP enables inter-agency training and cross-border crisis management by allowing first responders and emergency service personnel to communicate more effectively and to direct resources more efficiently.
The TTXs and Demos serve as an opportunity to test the MRPP in a simulated crisis scenario. Participants can evaluate their own readiness levels while working jointly with other emergency response organisations through the improved situational awareness which the MRPP facilitates.
Scroll down to find out more about what has been happening with the IN-PREP project.
What is IN-PREP?
Effective disaster planning and applied response rely on practising scenarios and making sense of the situation in a rapidly changing scenario so that appropriate response can be offered with accuracy and speed. Both evidence and research reveals
Insufficient links between agencies during crises
A lack of training capabilities to prepare different agencies across countries to work together during transboundary crises
IN-PREP is creating a preparedness system for training which includes:
The Mixed Reality Preparedness Platform MRPP – a novel IT based training platform that can exchange information with C2 systems
Training modules to facilitate transboundary preparedness
A Crisis Management handbook for all agencies
The MRPP will be interoperable, connected with existing systems used across Europe. It will be an end-to-end crisis management training system facilitating augmented reality scenarios on multiple levels. More detailed information may be found at www.IN-PREP.eu
IN-PREP 1st TTX in Spoleto, Italy
On 29 November 2018, IN-PREP held its 1st TTX (Table Top Exercise) in Spoleto, Italy.
In this exercise, collaborative response planning at a national level was sought between civil protection agencies (fire brigade, EMS, police services), the Municipality of Spoleto, local health services and volunteers.
The scenario was that of an industrial accident and potential hazmat incident where a vehicle transporting 20,000 litres of a chemical substance overturned next to a residential area on the outskirts of Spoleto. This incident required the intervention of local emergency services and allowed IN-PREP’s Mixed Reality Preparedness Platform to be tested in a crisis management scenario.
The MRPP in this instance helped participants to:
Access a decision checklist
Visualise the scenario in the Common Operational Picture
Allow access for organisations to make operational decisions of and annotations to the map
Make impact assessments at different stages
Populate the situation report from different organisations
Visualise status and location of participants on the map
Execute the evacuation plan
Manage the evacuation process
Before the 1st TTX, an advanced training session took place in which various tools (scenario builder, training environment, C2 and modeling tools) were used to enhance the training and allow participants to experiment for optimal response planning.
On 17 June 2019, IN-PREP held its 2nd TTX (Table Top Exercise) in Savona, Italy.
The purpose of this exercise was collaborative response training, particularly at a strategic multi-agency level and in a national and transboundary context.
Participants from the local fire service, coastguard and civil defence/protection, in addition to the Red Cross, Municipality of Savona and local health and emergency services put the Mixed Reality Preparedess Programme (MRPP) to the test, evaluating existing plans and testing new tools to enhance the efficiency of international cooperation in disaster management.
The scenario was that of a land/sea emergency and a resulting cruise ship evacuation. This incident required the intervention of local emergency services and allowed IN-PREP’s Mixed Reality Preparedness Platform and its related tools to be tested in a crisis management scenario in real-time.
Participants evaluated the MRPP against traditional paper methods of collaborative response training as the MRPP combines real and simulated data to allow for a more accurate visualisation of the crisis at hand.
A debrief took place following the 2nd TTX, where participants evaluated and discussed the outcomes of the exercise and planned for the upcoming 3rd TTX in Kampen, the Netherlands which will take place in October 2019.
IN-PREP 1st Integration Meeting and 4th Plenary Meeting
On 18-19 June 2019, in the aftermath of the 2nd TTX IN-PREP held our 1st Integration Meeting, and 4th Plenary Meeting of the project thus far.
The IN-PREP partners discussed the outcome of the 2nd TTX and participated in hands-on integration activities. These included planning for the 3rd TTX in Kampen, the Netherlands which will take place this October and determining the MRPP functionalities which will be demonstrated at the 3rd TTX.
In addition, a workshop took place on the Crisis Management Handbook for Transboundary Preparedness, which is being developed as an element of the IN-PREP project.
Lastly, the current status of the IN-PREP tools were presented to participants including the Triage app which will assist medical first responders in the aftermath of an incident with human casualties.
IN-PREP + Partner Events
IN-PREP and our Partners have attended a number of events relevant to the project during the last period. Below is a short description of each.
Workshop at I4CM Conference – 3-4 September 2018 – Warsaw, Poland
IN-PREP and INACHUS jointly hosted a workshop at the I4CM Conference organised by the DRIVER+ project which served to link the European Commission with national policy representatives, practitioners, solution providers and related projects so that they could interact on current challenges faced in the field of crisis management. Find out more about the event here.
4th International Development Symposium on CBRN Protection Capabilities – 3-5 September 2018 – Berlin, Germany
Claudia Berchtold of Fraunhofer presented IN-PREP research on ”Success and Failure Factors in EU Transboundary Crisis Management” at the Prevention and Countermeasures panel. Attendees from the fields of politics, administration, academia and military organisations attended to find out the latest developments in security policy. The presentation is available here. Find out more about the event here.
International CAP Implementation Workshop – 31 October 2018 – Hong Kong
IN-PREP partner CNVVF, represented by Stefano Marsella and Marcello Marzoli presented at the International CAP Implementation Workshop on interoperability. The IN-PREP project was also addressed and its strategic objectives outlined as the integration of civil protection agencies’ Coordination, Command and Control Systems (C3). The presentation is available here. Find out more about the event here.
Security Research Event (SRE) – 5-6 December 2018 – Brussels, Belgium
IN-PREP was exhibited at SRE 2018. The theme of the event was ”Making Europe a Safer Place: Demonstrating the Impact of EU-funded Security Research”. In attendance were over 800 participants including a wide range of security stakeholders, researchers, industry representatives, public security providers and practitioners (crisis managers, first responders and civil protection agencies). Find out more about the event here.
Webinar at the monthly DARWIN CoP – 22 January 2019
IN-PREP Project Coordinator Evangelos Sdongos from ICCS participated in a webinar organised by the DARWIN Community of Practitioners, discussing collaborative response planning and training enhancements for disaster resilience based on insights from the 1st TTX in Spoleto organised by IN-PREP. Watch a recap videohere. Find out more about the webinar here.
Lazaros Filippidis of the University of Greenwich presented on large-scale evacuations using examples from IN-PREP’s 1st TTX at the 2nd Annual Dissemination Workshop of the FIRE-IN project in Barcelona, Spain. Watch a video of the evacuation modelling presented by Lazaroshere. Find out more about the event here.
ISCRAM 2019 – 19 May 2019 – Valencia, Spain
IN-PREP held an event at the 2nd International Workshop on Intelligent Crisis Management Technologies for Climate Events at the ISCRAM 2019 Conference. The workshop was jointly organised with iReact and beAWARE and presented the most recent methods for forecasting, early warning, collection, processing and transmission of emergency data in addition to analysis of multimodal data and coordination between first responders and authorities. Find about more about the event here.
PSCE Conference – 4 June 2019 – Lancaster, UK
Katrina Petersen of Trilateral Research participated in a workshop titled ”Beyond the Technical: Legal, Political, Social and Ethical Considerations of Transboundary Cooperation” jointly organised by IN-PREP and HEIMDALL at the PSCE Conference in Lancaster, United Kingdom. Topics discussed included challenges and solutions for transboundary data management, legal and policy issues encountered when working across boundaries and opportunities and difficulties in cross-agency training. Find out more information about the event here.
IN-PREP in the Media
IN-PREP has received significant media coverage, since the last newsletter, which can be viewed below:
There is a number of interesting blogs on the IN-PREP website which you may wish to read:
Crisis Managers’ recommendations for IN-PREP System Developmentby Dr. Pia Nottebaum (DHPol) and Larissa Müller (FhG) This blog provides recommendations for IN-PREP’s system development in areas including data management, information transfer and the tracking of data and recall of information.
Improved Disaster Preparedness using (Big) Data Analyticsby Spyros Evangelatos (EXUS)
A blog outlining how one module of IN-PREP’s MRPP is dedicated to the data analysis process not only of historical data but also of data coming from diverse sources such as GIS, GPS and social and environmental monitoring sensors.
The Evacuation Process – From Incident Start to Location of Safetyby Lazaros Filippidis (UoG)
This blog explains the nature of planning, training and real-time support in situations which would necessitate an evacuation and explains the complexity of the evacuation process.
We warmly encourage you to participate in the IN-PREP End User Advisory Board. You will have opportunities to interact with the end user community and have an overview of IN-PREP achievements in research and training activities. Please send us an email getinvolved@lists.in-prep.eu
IN-PREP is a large Innovation Action Horizon 2020 (H2020) project in the domain of crisis management that focuses on the preparedness phase. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 740627.
