Crisis Monitoring and Response Technologies

Institute for the Protection and the Security of the Citizen

Action: 41001

Acronym: CriTech

Summary:

Technical and scientific scope------------------------------The CRITECH action focuses on developing and testing solutions to enhance decision-making in crisis management; preparedness, early warning and response. The solutions under development and testing include experimenting with information retrieval techniques, real-time data stream prioritisation/visualisation, numerical modelling systems, and visualisation/display systems in order to see how they impact the performance of collaborative crisis management including decision-making, typically in situation centre/crisis room environments. The solutions also include developing and testing Web-based platforms for sharing, managing, disseminating crisis relevant information in a number of external environments that are involved in operational crisis management and related decision making. These platforms and early warning and alerting systems combine the Action#s R+D and expertise on Web 2.0 and information technologies, geo-information technologies (including GIS) and numerical modelling. Since 9/11 and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, the EU has been under increasing pressure to enhance its ability to react quickly and effectively to disasters and crises both within its territories and in third countries. This expectation has grown and is expected to grow further due to the potential impact of climate change on increased incidence of humanitarian disasters and susceptibility to instability and political crises. Furthermore, the EU is expected today to have the capacity to not only to respond to a range of disasters but also to play an increasingly visible role in preventing them and reducing the associated risks. Numerical modelling, GIS, and information and Web 2.0 technologies play an essential contribution towards building effective and relevant, systems for:# the identification and detection of risks and hazards that have the potential to develop into disasters# the communication of early warnings and alerts to relevant stakeholders involved in disaster response# the modelling the potential impact of specific crises and disasters# for collaborative crisis management and decision-makingPolicy scope------------------------------The Action is steadily building expertise and capacity in developing and benchmarking technological solutions relevant to crisis management. Key technologies that are being addressed by the action include: geo-spatial technologies, Web 2.0 and information technologies, and numerical models (especially for tsunamis and infectious diseases). Concerning crisis management in general, the Action, to date, has been strategic in the choice of environments in which to test crisis management relevant technologies and solutions. The action has focused on crisis centres and situation rooms in the Commission (ENV/MIC, SANCO), in the Council#s Secretariat General (EU Joint Situation Centre) and the UN (UN department for peace keeping operations, DPKO). In the medium term, the testing environment will expand to include Community agencies such as ECDC and FRONTEX and authorities in the EU MSs concerned with crisis management. The testing will be further supported by means of the Secure and Situation Room models the action is further developing in the short to medium term. Furthermore, in the field of collaborative crisis management, in agreement and at the request of DG SANCO, the Action will intensify its cooperation with the Global Health Security Action Group (GHSAG), particularly the Risk Management and Communication Working Group (RMCWG). The Action has been invited by DG SANCO and the members of GHSAG/RMCWG to contribute to GHSAG/RMCWG, and in particular the Global Health Security Initiative, by means of contributing to a global pilot project, which entails further developing and extending the existing collaborative crisis management platform for health crises, HEDIS, to handle crisis management decision-making for terrorism threats and crises concerned with public health # focusing initially on CBRN threats as well as communicable diseases related to terrorism threats. The members of the pilot project include the members of GHSAG/RMCWG, indicated in footnote 2. An evolution and endorsement of the pilot project will imply that HEDIS will become the central node for Global Public Health Crises Early Warning and Alerting, integrating open source intelligence from the JRC's Medical Health Intelligence System (MEDISYS) as well as data and information from a number of other systems identified during the pilot project; see also the Web Mining and Intelligence Action for further details on MEDISYS.