Dr. Massimo Cristaldi, IES CTO, will present REACT at the upcoming ETSI EMTEL meeting, that will be held in Sophia Antipolis (France) from October 6th to October 8th. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, broadcast and internet technologies.

ETSI is officially recognized by the European Commission as a European Standards Organization. Within ETSI the EMTEL group addresses a broad spectrum of aspects related to the provisioning of telecommunications services in emergency situations.

Emergency situations may range from a narrow perspective of an individual being in a state of personal emergency (with need to make an emergency call due to sudden illness, traffic accident, outbreak of fire in the home…) to a very broad perspective of serious disruptions to the functioning of society (viz. disaster situations due to events or processes such as earthquakes, floods, large scale terrorist attacks, etc.).

The concept also covers the telecommunications needs of society’s dedicated resources for ensuring public safety; including police forces, fire fighting units, ambulance services and other health and medical services, as well as civil defence services. The telecommunications needs of such services have until now been satisfied by dedicated networks and equipment, often different for different services, but with modern technology it is possible to increasingly integrate such services with the public telecommunications services. Terrestrial and satellite radio/TV broadcasting and Internet services provide means for dissemination of information to the general public, in particular in hazardous and disaster situations.Telecommunications means may also be increasingly used as parts of various community functions such as health services (e.g. remote patient monitoring to reduce need for hospitalization). EMTEL group covers the standardization aspects of the above mentioned topics.