Wearin’ partners with SYNERGISE to improve disaster management

Wearin’ is an Associated Partner of the internationally funded collaborative project SYNERGISE to develop, from September 2023 to February 2027, an integrated toolkit for improved management of natural and man-made disasters. The project involves 18 partners from Europe, Japan, South Korea and the USA, and kicked off on September 5, 2023, in Essen, Germany. To boost the efficiency and safety of first responders during life-saving missions, the SYNERGISE team will develop a Novel Integrated Toolkit for Collaborative Response and Enhanced Situational Awareness (NIT-CRES). The toolkit shall improve the management of natural and man-made disasters whilst boosting collaboration between first responders to increase mission effectiveness and victim detection at highly challenging and complex incident sites.

18 partners from Europe, Japan, South Korea and the US will design, develop, integrate, deploy, test, validate and demonstrate the Novel Integrated Toolkit. It will comprise a multitude of tools and services required to:

1. Boost situational awareness and sense-making by offering first responders (FRs) the means to autonomously and synergistically perform indoor and outdoor exploration of incident sites towards victim detection
2. Receive at all times information about responders’ position and vitals as well as analyses of passive and active threats and hazards at the area of operations
3. Upgrade collaborative response and incident as well as resources management by continuously sharing and updating the common operational picture across deployed teams, among the chain of command and between participating agencies.
4. Equip the first responders (FRs) at all fronts by delivering novel, affordable, accepted, and customized response tools and services as part of their operational assets.

For improving the collaborative response and enhancing situational awareness, the Novel Integrated Toolkit will deliver:

• Cutting-edge, innovative and integrated tools featuring aerial, legged swarm of robots and snake like robots for autonomous site exploration and victims detection;
• Advanced wearables for real-time vitals monitoring of first responders, gas/environmental sensing for potential toxics and explosives detection;
• Advanced localization systems to locate the first responders indoors and outdoors;
• Augmented reality for robotic control, visualization and remote collaboration;
• AI enabled synthesis and fusion of information for acquiring mission intelligence;
• A rapidly deployable communications system to allow for quick information exchange and human-machine interaction for optimization of exchange between devices and first responders;
• An interoperable Incident Management and Command and Control System to enhance multi-agency response and allow for effective mission deployment, resources and assets utilization whilst enhancing situational awareness and sense-making at all times.

These technologies will be extensively tested, validated and evaluated within a rich Testing Programme, in realistic settings, in which response agencies will be operating the tools and in turn shall provide recommendations for their development. Notably, a novel human-machine teaming framework will be followed to allow seamless embedment of new and novel technologies in the users’ operations.

The international consortium convened in Essen, Germany, from September 5-7, 2023, to officially launch the SYNERGISE project during a kick-off meeting aiming at consolidating the action plan and work packages for the next 42 months of collaboration.

SYNERGISE stands for “A novel integrated System of Systems strengthening technical and logistical capacities to ensure better response to emergencies by synergistically addressing First Responders capability gaps”.

The project started on September 1, 2023, and will run until February 28, 2027

Wearin’: an Associated Partner

Wearin’ plays a central role in the development of the SYNERGISE Toolkit. As an Associated Partner of the project, it has been assigned tasks and objectives for the provision of wearable technology in IoT and AI to develop algorithms monitoring First Responders’ vitals, as well as environmental sensors detecting abnormal or risky situations and sending alarms to the control room.

The following project working packages in which Wearin’ will take part are key to the development of SYNERGISE’s Novel Integrated Toolkit for Collaborative Response and Enhanced Situational Awareness (NIT-CRES):

• Practitioners Needs & Toolkit Architecture and Design
• Wearables techs for First Responders (Real time indoor and outdoor responder Geolocation & proximity to risks & hazards)
• Multi-agency collaboration and Incident Management and Augmenting the Common Operational Picture
• System Integration, Testing & Evaluation and Knowledge Capitalisation
• High Impact Creation, Dissemination, Communication, Awareness and Exploitation
• Consortium Management & R-I Development Coordination.

SYNERGISE is a further milestone in the deployment of Wearin’s unique solution worldwide.

Field-tested by firefighters and law enforcement officers in Europe, the Wearin’ solution was at the center of the European Domino FSX civil protection exercise in 2022.

In the same year, the solution received the Innovation & New Products Recognition Award at Electra Mining Africa, and Wearin’ teamed up with Airbus Secure Land and Communications to combine their technologies to improve the safety and coordination of field response personnel.

Since October 2022, cash-and-valuables-in-transit (CVIT) agents in Switzerland have been using the Wearin’ solution as an indispensable safety net during their missions throughout the country.