The term first responders usually refers to law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical personnel. These responders, however, are not the only assets that may be required in the aftermath of a strike on the homeland. In contrast, the more appropriate term, emergency responders, comprises all personnel within a community that might be needed in the event of a natural or technological (man-made) disaster or terrorist incident. These responders might include hazardous materials response teams, urban search and rescue assets, community emergency response teams, anti-terrorism units, special weapons and tactics teams, bomb squads, emergency management officials, municipal agencies, and private organizations responsible for transportation, communications, medical services, public health, disaster assistance, public works, and construction. In addition, professional responders and volunteers, private nonprofit, nongovernmental groups (NGOs), such as the Red Cross, can also play an important role in emergency response. As a result, the tasks that a national emergency response system would be required to perform are more complex than simply aiding victims at the scene of a disaster, carried out by several kinds of professional users with different roles and expertise. Moreover, emergency preparedness and response lifecycle is a complex process that consists of the preparation, response, and recovery from a disaster, including planning, logistical support, maintenance and diagnostics, training, and management as well as supporting the actual activities at a disaster site and post-recovery after the incident.

Many challenges arise in the immediate aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster. First responders must deal with pressing and dramatic challenges in a chaotic, dynamic, and dangerous environment while locating and rescuing victims and neutralising threats. They must make urgent decisions, but the zone can be large, complex, hostile, with many areas unsafe to explore. The lack of reliable information and the deep uncertainty present serious obstacles to a quick and effective response. INTREPID aims to create a unique platform, seamlessly integrating Intelligence Amplification and eXtended Reality concepts, with unprecedented Smart Cybernetic Assistants and innovative deep indoor Networking and Positioning capabilities, to improve and accelerate the exploration and assessment of disaster zones. The project will validate its effectiveness, in iterative and complementary pilots, to support the rescue operations in areas that are complex or dangerous to explore. Always first on scene, first responders will be able to immediately start operations without having to wait for specialized teams or for the zone to be fully secured. When these teams arrive, first responders have already used INTREPID to provide them with reliable information and effective assistance. The result is an immediate and targeted response that will allow faster, more effective and safer operations. The consortium consists of world-class research centres and SMEs, coordinated by an industrial with a leading position in the security market. It will follow a user-centric methodology involving many first responders, and an international Advisory Board and Open User Group ensuring diversity. Social, ethical and legal constraints will be carefully considered during the project’s lifetime. The project will design and implement a training curriculum and an innovative evaluation framework along with an ambitious communication and dissemination plan, preparing the ground for successful exploitation.

A methodology for tracking and analysing the needs for standardization and certification harmonization thorough the project life cycle will be defined and enforced, which will allow the early identification of issues related to the conceptualization, design, implementation, integration and deployment of tools for support the EU disaster resiliency; which will be facilitated by a complete consultation strategy to the different stakeholders that are expected to act at each capability development phase, ranging from providers to end users. On these grounds H2020-VALKYRIES will develop, integrate and demonstrate capabilities for enabling immediate and coordinated emergency response including search and rescue, security and health, in scenarios of natural/provoked catastrophes with multiple victims, with special application in cases in which several regions or countries are affected and hence greater interoperability being required. H2020-VALKYRIES will propose both design and development of a modular, interoperable, scalable and secure platform, which will allow the integration between legacy solutions and new technologies. The platform will be able to deploy services and dynamically adapt its behaviour, as the emergency requires it. A series of use cases and demonstrators will be developed placing an emphasis on cross-frontier and cross-sectorial BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight) scenarios, where the usual communications infrastructure could have been damaged, and emergency response teams are deployed without an accurate view of the operation environment

Whilst citizen participation in environmental policy making is still in its infancy, there are signs of a growing level of interest. The majority of citizens, though, both as individuals and as groups often feel disengaged from influencing environmental policies. They also remain unaware of publicly available information, such as the GEOSS or Copernicus initiatives. The SCENT project will alleviate this barrier. It will enable citizens to become the ‘eyes’ of the policy makers by monitoring land-cover/use changes in their everyday activities. This is done through a constellation of smart collaborative technologies delivered by the SCENT toolbox in TRLs 6-8: i) low-cost and portable data collection tools, ii) an innovative crowd-sourcing platform, iii) serious gaming applications for a large-scale image collection and semantic annotation, iv) a powerful machine-learning based intelligence engine for image and text classification, v) an authoring tool for an easy customization by policy makers, vi) numerical models for mapping land-cover changes to quantifiable impact on flood risks and vii) a harmonization platform, consolidating data and adding it to GEOSS and national repositories as OGC-based observations. SCENT will be evaluated in two large scale demonstrations in Kifisos Attica and Danube Delta. Our consortium covers the complete stakeholder chain: industries in machine learning (IBM), SMEs in crowd-sourcing (U-Hopper), gaming (Xteam) and awareness raising (Carr), leading research institutes with expertise in hydrodynamic modelling (UNESCO-IHE), data harmonization and authoring tools (ICCS) and environmental monitoring (DDNI), NGOs at the pilot sites (HRTA, SOR) and policy makers/public bodies (Region of Attica). The SCENT initiative will go beyond the current project and form a European-wide citizen movement, created and fostered by the SCENT stakeholders, that will ensure its sustainability and its complementarity with existing citizen partnerships.

First responders play a prominent and essential role in the everyday situations of all civil society; and among all services they provide are law enforcement, fire suppression, and emergency medical services (EMS). a fast and adequate response to emergencies in all three services can escalate rapidly and emergency responders might be able to do something to stop it if they get there in time. The police might stop an assailant from doing harm (or doing more harm than has already been done); the fire department might be able to rescue victims from a burning building; EMS might be able to resuscitate a person in ​cardiac arrest (one of a very small number of medical conditions guaranteed to result in death if not treated properly and quickly).In case of big disasters they also need to work with interdisciplinary teams and coordination. They everyday activities involve a lot of stressful situations and communication with subjects with special needs. It also involves a many soft skills like decision making, teamwork or stress resilience. Digital advances like satellite image analysis are tools they can incorporate to their daily activities; but as far as the technology advances they need to be trained to make an effective use of the new tools. First responders are under the need of continuous training; and that training can be provided under many tools. STRONG project proposes a serie of online courses that tackle the training need of first responders under a transversal approach; the courses are grouped by theme, not by type of first responders. The main aim of this project is to provide first responders a serie of basic skills to be able to provide an effective response to a serie of circumstances. The online courses are complemented by a digital tool to create an European Network of First Responders. Through this tool they can connect; share experiences; best practices and foster cooperation among first responders team at european level. The challenges they face are usually not circumscribed to a sole territory, so it is crucial to promote the cooperation at european level.Results during the project: Project management procedures and project plans (work plan, Monitoring and Reporting (M&R), communication and dissemination activities, quality plan) agreed and monitoring.4 transnational meetings realized. O1. Research of the state of the art. VR applied on training courses for first responders. O2. Online course: Soft skills for first responders. O3. Online course: Weather menaces. O4. Online course: Health risks and personal risks. O5. Tool for the creation of an European Network of First Responders. 11 first responders and trainers participating in a 4 days international intensive study program (C1)30 first responders and trainers participating in a 5 days international intensive study program (C2)Minimum of 140 people enrolled on each of the online courses.