Fire brigades, emergency medical services and police are confronted with an increasing number of natural disasters and incidents on the one hand, and the trend towards bigger PSAPs serving larger areas on the other hand. This makes systems which assist operators and dispatcher in getting a fast overview on incidents more and more important.
The emergency services participating in the consortium ask for a system that can facilitate their work if, for instance a lot of people call for the same incident, using different emergency numbers and other scenarios during that semantic data analysis of emergency calls can help to get an immediate, good overview on an emergency using information arriving simultaneously at different channels.
The project consortium driven by the emergency services wants to develop a system that can be used for:

• Call clustering
• Call prioritisation
• Interoperability between different PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) and their computer aided dispatch systems

The consortium develops semantic technologies for call clustering and prioritisation, based on sensors (weather, air pollution, etc.), time and location of emergency calls, as well as keywords identified during the emergency call taking. The interoperability is realised by using secure XML GIS-based data exchange between PSAPs. Beside the active participation of emergency services mentioned above and experiences of other partners in this field, an active interaction with further emergency services all over Europe will help to develop a system that fully takes into account user needs, current processes, and infrastructures used for handling emergency calls. REACT is designed as additional system layer to existing computer aided dispatch and call taking systems, while not intending to replace them.
REACT is a project co-financed under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union. This project is driven by three European emergency services

• Corpo Nazionale Dei vigili Del Fuoco (Italy)
• ACPO – Sussex Police Authority (UK)
• Feuerwehr Aachen (Germany)

The consortium coordinated by IES Solutions is completed by technical experts from different European countries, providing the know how necessary to transfer user needs into a new system enhancing current infrastructure.

The main outcome of REACT is Jixel, the suite created by IES Solutions for the management of any kind of event. Jixel has been used by Vigili del Fuoco during L’Aquila earthquake, and after that has been provided to the firefighters, which use it for the management of all their events and operations. Recently Jixel has been restyled, an many features were added: to learn more, visit its website at www.jixel.eu/web/en.