Integrating GMES Emergency Services with satellite navigation and communication for establishing a flood information service

FLOODIS EU FP7 Project kicked-off on 15 October 2013 at the Higher Institute on Territorial Systems for Innovation (SiTI) in Turin, Italy. Integrating GMES Emergency Services with satellite navigation and communication for establishing a flood information service (FLOODIS) is a collaborative project funded under FP7-SPACE-2013-1 within the framework of the SP1-Cooperation. The UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, Venice (Italy), will be responsible for the implementation and supervision of the second work package on user requirements.

The FLOODIS project is being carried out by a consortium of European companies in collaboration with UNESCO. The project coordinator, ISMB (Italy), is supported by GeoVille (Austria), Alpha Consult (Italy), NDConsult (UK), Terranea (Germany) and EOXplore (Germany).

FLOODIS will provide an accurate location-based application for portable devices. The proposed solution closes a critical gap for disaster management teams, civil protection, field/emergency response units to better address and mitigate crisis situations arising before, during, and after heavy flooding. The project will provide an open source, location-based smartphone application for the general public to enable the capacity for individuals to take pre-cautionary actions, therefore vastly reducing the likelihood of human and economic loss. The project will also consider rescuers relying on professional terminals and legacy communication channels. FLOODIS will combine Earth Observation and GNSS (GPS, Galileo, EGNOS/EDAS) technologies to deliver alerts and interactive maps on flooding risk/events to users in the geographical area at risk.

A key and innovative capability of the system will be the ability of the user to send back actual information about the situation “on field” to a remote gateway for ingestion and subsequent dissemination to all other users. As such, it will serve to provide up-to-date, local information to disaster management centres, civil protection agencies, emergency response units, as well as affected citizens.

UNESCO has assigned the Science unit of its Regional Bureau in Venice with the responsibility of the Project’s Work Package 2 (WP2) on ‘user requirements’. The objective of the package is to increase inclusiveness and inflow-outflow communication on capacity and knowledge sharing between consortium partners and end users in order to allow their full inclusiveness at the test stage of the pre-operational phase until the service demonstration phase (WP7). The end users have the specific goal to analyse service requirements and provide recommendations and KPIs for the FLOODIS Service Platform. A smaller number of key users will also be involved through a specific User Committee (UC) created in this WP and chaired by UNESCO. 

UNESCO will implement and supervise the tasks of this work package, with the aim to increase communication on capacity and knowledge sharing between consortium partners and end users at the test stage of the pre-operational phase of FLOODIS Service Platform in order to allow their full inclusiveness and operation follow up recommendations aimed at a successful testing and possibly consider its extensibility in SEE area.

As part of the WP2 process, UNESCO will in particular set up an informal coordination and intersectoral platform in Albania and in Italy (Veneto). This shall provide project partners, through the organisation of 3 dedicated multi-stakeholders workshops to be held in Albania and in the region of Veneto, with a synergic interplay with end-user project testers in the Veneto and in particular, with the Albanian stakeholders which includes the National Agency for Civil Protection of the Ministry of Interior.