The future of natural disaster management will be linked to real-time data: in fact, it is starting I-REACT, a three-year project worth €6,5 million funded by the European Commission to create a real-time disaster prevention and control system. The Istituto Superiore Mario Boella of Turin is the project leader, which brings together 20 European partners, including research centres, international organizations such as UNESCO, public bodies and, as is increasingly the case in the field of applied research, also small and medium-sized enterprises, which will have the role of enhancing from the point of commercial view innovation.
By 2018, I-REACT, an acronym for Improving Resilience to Emergencies through Advanced Cyber Technologies, will create a platform capable of exploiting the technologies already available today to collect and analyze multiple data sources and generate real-time information on floods, fires, earthquakes and other disasters. Collection and response will be fast and accurate, while ensuring interoperability with current emergency management systems such as the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) or synergy with intergovernmental science programs through partnership with the Regional Office UNESCO for Science and Culture in Europe and the Risk Reduction Unit at its Paris headquarters and global coordination platforms on risk reduction through the involvement of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) , to which active citizens and information from social media will be added.
I-REACT was born from the experience of European project FLOODIS, focused on floods and completed in 2015 with a smartphone application (already tested) capable of collecting information through photos taken in the area and returning short and long-term projections of the evolution of the phenomenon, thus contributing to the organization of the teams rescue. I-REACT implements this data collection, analysis and return scheme, multiplying the opportunities: in addition to the photos taken with smartphones, the platform will also exploit social media, by intercepting spontaneously posted images on Instagram, Twitter messages, to which will be added information from on-site operators equipped with wearable smart devices (glasses and bracelets) and traditional shots from satellites. I-REACT will process all this data with a BigData architecture, which will take advantage of the Microsoft cloud platform and will return disaster evolution projections in a very short time.
Great value will be given to the role that citizens can play in these situations thanks to the use of their smartphones for signalling: the design in fact envisages a special study aimed at maximizing the involvement of people through the application of logic typical of video games in real life situations.
I-REACT is a European project included in the call security of Horizon 2020 the new European Framework Program for research and innovation. Of primary importance is the role played by Italy which, in addition to coordinating the project through the Istituto Superiore Mario Boella of Turin - a national center of excellence for information and communication technologies - is present with the Polytechnic of Turin, the Bruno Kessler Foundation, Celi, JoinPad and CSI Piemonte. In addition to these, the other partners who will contribute to bringing I-REACT to the market at the end of the three years – thus meeting the Commission's requirements in terms of long-term sustainability – are: Geoville, Eoxplore, Terranea, Alpha Consult, UNESCO, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Meteosim, Bitgear, Ansur, Technical University of Vienna, Scienseed, Aquobex, Answare, Joint Research Center of the European Commission.
