Emergency support system to deliver data in time of major crisis

Intergraph has been named a member of the Emergency Support System (ESS) Consortium approved by the European Commission to begin research and development of a portable emergency command and control system that incorporates real-time data collection technologies. The system will provide actionable intelligence to managers during crisis events and will be used as a framework for future crisis management systems.

ESS will leverage Intergraph’s extensive public safety and security expertise to develop the core of the ESS portal, the Data Fusion Mediation System, which will collect data from different data sources and harmonize them into one comprehensive dataset. This dataset will then provide input to the Web-based ESS portal to help support decision making in crisis situations. Intergraph will also have a significant role in the development of all work packages of the ESS project.

Part of the Seventh EU Framework Program, ESS is a four-year project expected to run until 2013. The European Commission will contribute euro 9.1 million over the next four years. The ESS consortium, which is led by Verint Systems, is comprised of 19 leading European technology companies, research institutes and end-user organizations.

The purpose of ESS is to enable improved control and management of major crisis events such as terror attacks, industrial accidents and natural disasters. The idea guiding the development of ESS is real-time fusion of various forms of field-derived data including video, audio, weather, location tracking, radioactivity, bio-chemical, telecom derived data, affected population reports and other information. The data will be communicated via both portable and fixed platforms including wireless communication devices, UAV, air-balloon and field-vehicles. Fusion of the data is handled within a central system which performs information analysis and provides decision support applications for Web-based command and control systems. This provides flexible, yet comprehensive coverage of the affected area.

Once available to the market, the ESS concept would offer real time synchronization and information sharing between first responders and support forces at the site of the incident such as police, rescue teams and firefighters as well as out-of-theater command and control centers of the various involved authorities (e.g. municipalities and homeland security). ESS will also enable the commanders to communicate with the affected on-site personnel by sending text or recorded voice messages.