Crisis support

An electronic crisis system has been designed to provide timely and accurate support to government agencies and rescue organisations involved in dealing with catastrophes such as floods or chemical spills.

The

(FIT) has helped develop key components for the EU-funded

(ERMA) platform.

The automated system is activated by sensors that can be deployed at ports, airports and mid-sized municipalities at risk from natural disasters.

The FIT team has developed a series of indicators based on complex algorithms that evaluate data from the sensors and provide decision-making support to emergency services.

'The architecture has a sensor network for monitoring the environment,' said Prof Thomas Rose, head of process management at FIT. 'Various types of sensor are used to measure defined parameters and forward the data instantaneously to the system.'

Information, such as rapidly rising water levels in a river, is collected from vital points in the local environment, which may give early warnings of an impending disaster. The data is then transferred over a local area network to a nearby control centre.