Managing Crisis Communication
Modern societies are continually confronted with disasters and catastrophes. Extreme events can threaten societies' values and/or life-sustaining functions and create an urgent need to respond to them under conditions of severe uncertainty. Under such conditions, it is the responsibility of public authorities to manage the response operation in order to save lives and restore a sense of order. In the first years of this millennium, a spate of extreme events demonstrated just how hard these challenges are to manage. Examples include the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, the bombings in Madrid and London and the threat of avian bird flu and SARS to name a few. Study revealed that the 2005 terror attack in the London underground and the 2006's Hurricane Katrina that precious time was lost because of de-synchronisation of information and lack of up-to-date information sharing between different public authorities. A project called Emergency Support System (ESS), funded by the European Commission -DG Enterprise under the Security Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme aims to deliver an innovative tool to address the perennial problem of crisis communications under extreme conditions. The ESS is a suite of real-time data-centric technologies which will provide actionable information to crisis managers during abnormal events. This information will enable improved control and management, resulting in real-time synchronisation between forces on the ground (police, rescue, firefighters) and out-of-theater command and control centers (C&C). One of the constant challenges encountered by public authorities when managing emergency response networks is the lack of actionable information, i.e. the information that is required for making high-quality decisions under pressure. During the initial phases of an emerging crisis it is often unclear what the situation is: What is the cause? How are people responding? How many casualties? What are the damages? Has the threat evaporated or is it still evolving? Without accurate information, crisis managers find it hard to make fast and correct decisions. In fact, the absence of reliable information (combined with the flood of unsubstantiated reports and rumours) tends to have a paralysing effect on decision-makers in a crisis situation. The risk of making decisions based on partial, non-verified information may have unintended effects, which may fuel rather than dampen the crisis. The ESS Project aims to resolve this by developing a 'revolutionary' crisis communication system that will reliably transmit filtered and pre-organised information streams to the crisis command system, which will provide the relevant information that is actually needed to make critical decisions. Any abnormal event may register as a sudden change or cumulative changes in one or several mediums which it interacts with (Telecom, Air, Spatial, Acoustic, Visual and more). For example, in an explosion, the affected mediums include: acoustic ("boom" sound), Visual (sudden explosion), and Telecom (sudden increase in traffic). Therefore, effective control of such an abnormal event means: monitoring each medium independently in real-time, activating an alarm when sudden or cumulative changes in one or more mediums are detected, and when necessary contacting the affected population and providing mass evacuation capabilities. ESS will integrate all these means into one central system, which will enable crisis managers to better respond to these challenges. The project will integrate several existing front end data collection technologies into a unique platform. This will include the development of sensors and the requisite accessories that will accompany each sensor. All ESS sensors will comply with the IP/IEC 529 standards and to outdoor use specifications. In order to enable the portable sensor to communicate with the back-office, the porting platform will include a communication component which will consist of a wireless modem based on WLAN, Wi-MAX or GPRS. The Data Fusion Mediation System (DFMS) will be a centralised system that works over the ESS database, which will be connected to all front-end sensors activated in the system. As it is mentioned in objective 1, ESS will be focused on various types of sensors (thermal, video etc.). DFMS will have to solve following tasks: communication between sensors and database; data harmonisation from various sensor products of one type; data fusion of data from various types sensors; and spatial data localisation. The ESS will also provide an open application programming interface (API) in order to allow any public authority, if needed, to add more applications customized to its particular needs. ESS data, functionalities and data flow will be based on ISO standards or industrial standards. Each commercial application which adopted or will adopt these standards will be able to connect to ESS. The idea behind the ESS portal is to create an efficient synchronisation framework managing the data and information flow between different public authorities involved in emergency management operations and crisis managers (rescue forces, police, the fire department etc.). The ESS portal will provide the involved actors with a common, uniform and ubiquitous platform for collecting, analysing and sharing real time data for supporting management decisions. Thus, the ESS result will be a state of the art framework that will integrate a multi-tier architecture of information processing, the result of which will be accessible in a ubiquitous manner by all the actors involved, through the ESS portal. Access to the portal will be secured by means of SSL and VPN encryption along with other security technologies such as firewall and authentication procedures. The system is being tested and validated in three different test fields: a fire in a forested area, an abnormal event in a crowded stadium and toxic waste dump accidents in order to test its efficacy. Operating ESS under different scenarios is needed in order to test the system's capabilities in different kinds of crises, using a variety of collection tools. The final demonstration of the ESS project will take place near the village of Sospel in France on 11 April 2013. The demonstration will simulate a plane crash causing a forest fire spreading towards Italy, and will involve both French and Italian authorities. The situation includes the recovery of victims. The project is made up of five research institutes (IGSI, CEREN, IMEGO, KEMEA and IAIS), seven industrial partners (ALI, VRNT, WIND, AERO, GMV, ING and CS), three specialised SMEs (ALGO, APD and IT IS ), one professional project manager (Ernst & Young) and one medical emergency service provider(MDA). Each partner is bringing important and complementary expertise to the project. Three partners represent the end users for ESS technologies, solutions and perspective. CEREN is the agency coordinating emergency services in southern France, while KEMEA has a similar role in Greece. MDA is the Israeli national medical emergency service provider with extensive experience in emergency events.For more information, please visit: ESS Projecthttp://www.ess-project.eu/