NEXt generation Emergency Services

Project Information

NEXES

Grant agreement ID: 653337

DOI

10.3030/653337

Project closed

EC signature date 28 April 2015

Start date 1 May 2015

End date 30 April 2018

Funded under

• Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

Total cost

€ 5 761 083,75

EU contribution

€ 5 760 836,00

Coordinated by

RINICOM LIMITED
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NEXES (NEXt generation Emergency Services)

Reporting period: 2016-11-01 to 2018-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Current problems faced by European emergency services are the reliance of communication on voice calls, the inaccuracy of location data, the partial accessibility support of SMS and fax and the high number of false/hoax calls.
Millions of European citizens call emergency services expecting a swift and effective response, which requires emergency services to evolve and exploit the adoption of IP-enabled communication, information and interoperability technologies.
NEXES is the first ever end-to-end next generation emergency service (NGES) implementation, offering advanced Internet-enabled capabilities to improve accessibility (Total Conversation capabilities and pan-European 112 Apps), to deliver enhanced location information and to allow higher situational awareness and interoperability among emergency services, thus significantly improving emergency response and maintaining adequate levels of security in society.
NEXES’s importance to society is based on unparalleled capacity to expand the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency response, lessening the causes of delay and lack of appropriate resources. It is known that location inaccuracy leads to considerable loss of time (>30 minutes) in emergency response - a Swedish study valued the cost of a minute lost in life-saving operations at 1,300€ - and often translates into the loss of lives, temporary or definitive disabilities and a generalised sense of insecurity. The NEXES System and Apps for citizens and FRs dramatically contribute to the reduction of the number of deaths and injuries and their associated societal costs (premature death, life with disability, medical treatment costs, productivity loss), overcoming known limitations of emergency services. Further, the NEXES Recommendations support emergency services to build a paced pathway for the adoption of IP-enabled next generation capabilities that meet emergency services’ requirements and citizens’ needs.
Overall, attaining its strategic objectives, NEXES empowers emergency services and citizens to adopt Internet-enabled communication and information technologies that support total conversation (voice, real-time text, video and data) and rich emergency data exchange to enhance situational awareness and interoperability and deliver high performing emergency response.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The NEXES RIA started on May 1st 2015 and was completed on April 30th 2018, having achieved all proposed Milestones and submitted all planned 34 deliverables. NEXES technical and technological innovations were implemented and validated in 34 demonstration activities performed across 2 years, with the active involvement of the NEXES end-users advisors and more than 300 expert representatives of emergency services, public safety authorities, civil society organisations and citizens. More than 500 dissemination and communication activities were also performed to maximise NEXES’s impact in key stakeholders and society as a whole, reaching a 15-million-person audience.
Based on relevant user requirements, adequately reflecting emergency services’ requirements and the needs of all citizens, including those experiencing disability or special needs, the NEXES partners developed the NEXES NG PSAP System and pan-European 112 Apps for citizens and First Responders, in full compliance with EU and national regulation, ethics principles and open standards, offering a set of functions - total conversation support, improved location information, exchange of additional caller data and multimedia files, superior call prioritisation and routing, enhanced situational awareness and interoperability features - that enable next generation (NG) capabilities in emergency call taking, handling and dispatching and deliver a true end-to-end NGES solution.
NEXES also actively contributed to ongoing and future standardisation efforts (ETSI TS 103 478 and IETF RFC 8373) and shed a light on the way forward to regulate pan-European NG 112 calls in full IP-enabled environments.
The NEXES Campaigns of Demonstration and dissemination activities, involving exercises, App Challenge editions and pilots, as well as workshops, conferences and meetings, showcased the innovative capabilities of the NEXES System and Apps and allowed key stakeholders to foresee and understand their operational added-value and overwhelming societal benefits.
Indeed, the positive user and societal acceptance of NEXES encouraged the NEXES partners to draft 25 business plans and start exploiting business opportunities based on NEXES results, including pre-procurement activities of emergency services across Europe that echo the momentum to roll-out NEXES innovations.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

NEXES successfully progressed beyond the state-of-the-art of emergency services in Europe, characterised by the use of voice calls, with citizens experiencing deafness, hearing or speech impairment limited to fax or pre-registered SMS, and the reliance on inaccurate location data.
NEXES leverages on IP-enabled technologies to transform emergency services, adding to conventional voice-only or VoIP communications, image, video and real-time text capability, as well as the possibility to share additional data - personal profile, medical history and location information - across multiple platforms, including mobile Apps, messaging and social media. The novel capabilities greatly enhance the communication dynamics between emergency services and citizens, namely citizens experiencing disability, impairment or special needs, and strongly improve emergency situational awareness and response. These NG capabilities are supported by the different NEXES results that are clearly beyond the state-of-the-art of practice in emergency services across Europe: the NEXES NG PSAP System, the pan-European 112 Apps for First Responders and for citizens, the NEXES Testing Regime and Validation Framework and the NEXES Recommendations, all contributing to highlight and validate the performance of NEXES as the first end-to-end reference implementation of a NGES.
NEXES’s combination of richer communications, additional emergency-related information and improved location information enables network operators to prioritise and route emergency calls to the most appropriate PSAP and allows emergency services to receive accurate location data, build advanced situational awareness and interoperability and rapidly dispatch the most adequate emergency response. NEXES-enabled procedures positively affect the emergency call taking, call handling and response phases and attain significant service efficiency. An affordable solution for the paced transformation of emergency services, NEXES’s dramatic impact in the empowerment of citizens and of emergency services clearly generates social externalities.

The NEXES Results

The NEXES Approach

NEXES - Next Generation Emergency Services

NEXES in a Nutshell

NEXES - Emergency Means Readiness

The NEXES Innovations