The final workshop of the EmerGent project was held in Salzburg (Austria) yesterday, 14 February. It was part of the annual symposium of the VGBF (the Association for Hazardous Substances and Fire Protection Research, which includes fire officers and representatives of emergency management entities). This year, the symposium focus was on Social Media and GIS. During the meeting the experts tested the EmerGent platform with the aim of providing a last feedback before the upcoming final review of the project.

The EmerGent platform and the 112.social app

In order to test the EmerGent platform, an emergency scenario, located in Salzburg, has been simulated. By executing the trial scenario, end users were able to understand the benefits that the solutions developed by the project can offer to citizens and emergency services. The platform, developed for Emergency Services (ES), can receive alerts from the related app for smartphone (112.social), as well as collect information about current emergencies from social media.

The 112.social app allows citizens to alert the ES about emergency situations they are witnessing: the alert received by the ES will contain the event location (collected with the GPS service of the device), the description of what is happening, the typology of the event, as well as multi-media attachments (images, videos, audio files). This information allows the operators to have a complete picture of the situation and take appropriate actions. The app is also capable of receiving broadcast or private messages from the ES; the information exchange, both when sending and receiving messages, is possible thanks to the use of the CAP protocol.

112.social

Massimo Cristaldi, IES CTO, shows how 112.social works (Source: Twitter – Iratxe Gomez Susaeta)

The participants were interested in the

Recap

What: Final Workshop of the EmerGent project 

When: 14/2/2017

Where: Salzburg University, Salzburg, Austria

More Infohttp://www.fp7-emergent.eu/ (EmerGent project), https://www.facebook.com/112Social/ (112.social Facebook page)