INGENIOUS aims at providing a cost-effective, modular and highly reliable Next Generation Integrated Toolkit for Collaborative Response, at the service of First Responders (FRs), by adopting a two-prong approach in the operations and technology domain.
Operations: NGIT is directly utilised during response activities and upgrades protection and operational capabilities of the FRs whilst enabling collaboration and coordination among team members, agencies and between victims and infrastructure owners. NGIT supports and improves the following response activities: 1) Improving situational awareness by allowing local and remote detection, monitoring and analysis of passive and active threats; 2) Delivering resilient data and voice communications between teams and with victims; 3) Augmenting command, control and coordination over a novel C3 and Common Operational Picture platform 4) Preserving responders’ health and safety and boosting performance by upgrading their uniform and body gear; 5) Enhancing logistics and resource management by tracking and tracing FRs and their assets; 6) Improving casualty management by the use of novel applications for triaging and victim classification; 7) Upgrading Training and Exercises of the FR community.
Technology: NGIT armours the FRs with novel, affordable and reliable tools and services as part of their uniform and as part of their operational assets in an integrated manner, facilitating seamless and resilient interconnectivity and bosting awareness. More specifically, 1) the NGIT builds upon the concept of “smart” FRs by holistically equipping them to protect them and assist in conducting their response duties, empowering and enhancing their helmet, uniform, boots and accompanying K9 units with wearables, communication and localisation components, sensors and add-ons delivering augmented reality functions. 2) Moreover, the NGIT comprises of smart devices in the air and on the ground, that are essentially external response modules operated by FRs to monitor, map, analyse and assess the incident scene. 3) Ultimately, the NGIT supports FRs with multi-fusion and expert reasoning modules for improving situational awareness and threat and hazard detection, a C3 and a COP platform with augmented reality capabilities as add-ons for Command, Control and Coordination and with mobile applications to improve response activities.
INGENIOUS implements Integration testing and validation activities in a rich programme (led by FRs) and contains 27 Laboratory Integrated Tests (LITs), 18 Small Scale Tests (SSTs) and 2 Large Scale Exercises (FSXs) of the Toolkit’s integrated components. Main achievements of the project was related to the collection of user requirements, the definition of the use cases of the tests and exercises, the toolkit design as well as the development of the INGENIOUS NGIT consists of 18 tools. Finally, the project brand and communication strategy were defined while all the necessary steps to meet the ethical, legal and security requirements were taken. In total 46 video produced, 6 newsletters, and 24 Results, 24 blogs articles, 32 publications (conf. papers and journal publications), 41 event attendance and 24 results can be embodied in 12 possible products.
