E2mC aims at demonstrating the technical and operational feasibility of the integration of social media analysis and crowdsourced information within both the Mapping and Early Warning Components of Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS). The Project will develop a prototype of a new EMS Service Component (Copernicus Witness), designed to exploit social media analysis and crowdsourcing capabilities to generate a new Product of the EMS Portfolio. The purpose of the new Copernicus Witness Service Component is to improve the timeliness and accuracy of geo-spatial information provided to Civil Protection authorities, on a 24/7 basis, during the overall crisis management cycle and, particularly, in the first hours immediately after the event. This will result in an early confirmation of alerts from running Early Warning Systems as well as first rapid impact assessment from the field. The technological enabler of the Copernicus Witness is the innovative and scalable Social&Crowd (S&C) Platform, developed by E2mC. Heterogeneous social media data streams (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,… and different data: text, image, video, …) will be analysed and sparse crowdsourcing communities will be federated (crisis specific as Tomnod, HOT, SBTF and generic as Crowdcrafting, EpiCollect,…). Two demonstration loops will validate the usefulness of Copernicus Witness and the S&C Platform suitability to allow EC to evaluate possible Copernicus EMS evolution options. E2mC will perform demonstrations within realistic and operational scenarios designed by the Users involved within the Project (Civil Protection Authorities and Humanitarian Aid operators, including their volunteer teams) and by the current Copernicus EMS Operational Service Providers that are part of the E2mC Consortium. The involvement of social media and crowdsourcing communities will foster the engagement of a large number of people in supporting crisis management; many more citizens will become aware of Copernicus.

The number of incidents where police officers are first responders in critical situations with severe threat circumstances has drastically increased. A major challenge for these first responding officers is to properly evaluate the situation and decide how to further proceed and to assess and choose the most appropriate strategy. The appropriateness of this decision is highly critical as it has a strong impact on the potential success of the operation as well as on the potential impacts, scene environment (e.g. witnesses, involved civilians, etc.) and consequences. So the SHOTPROS project aims to investigate the influence of psychological and contextual human factors (HFs) on the behaviour of decision-making and acting (DMA) of police officers under stress and in high-risk operational situations in order to design better training for police officers to improve DMA Performance. SHOTPROS will develop a Virtual Reality (VR) solution to experimentally assess the degree to which these factors influence DMA behaviour. Subsequently the project will develop a HF-rooted training curriculum and a corresponding VR training solution to provide a comprehensive framework for practical training for decision-making and acting under stress and in high-risk (DMA-SR) situations in order to improve performance.The training will increase DMA-SR performance which will lead to better and more correct decisions (from several perspectives, e.g. law, ethic, etc.), to keep the guidance in threatened situations, to minimise use of force occurrences, and accordingly, to maximise the avoidance of casualties and collateral damage, such as panic and cascading or escalating effects. SHOTPROS involves 6 law enforcement agencies (LEA) as it sees the capabilities of effective, efficient and “correct” DMA-SR of police forces as an utmost important part of a European Security Model and a high need for the daily combat against crime, terrorism, CBRNe threats and radicalisms.

This project aims to build a dynamic, functional and sustainable pan European network of CBRN training centres, testing and demonstration sites (CBRN TC) strengthening capacity building in training and users-driven innovation and research, based on well-identified needs. We seek to better European preparedness, resilience and incident response to CBRN attacks and emerging threats through close multi- (stakeholders) and single-discipline (practitioners) interactions. This makes CBRN TC the perfect operational intermediary between all civilian and military CBRN actors, EU relevant bodies and policy-makers, as well as the best cradle for expansion of a CBRN network of professionals. Main pillars for the network and confidence building will be to pool and share resources, effective practices and lessons learned, to map and label EU CBRN TC based on their capabilities and specificities, and to use a dedicated web based information and communication platform for exchanges and dissemination. Rather than usual workshops that are of no interest for task-focused, busy practitioners, the CBRN TC network will organize joint activities, training and debriefing in well-adapted infrastructures, using real-life or simulated situations (e.g., field exercises, table top, serious gaming and simulations), with external partners, in order to foster the identification of genuine users’ needs with users-driven technological solutions. This network will also benefit to national and EU CBRN projects, thereby expanding network scope and size, fast-tracking innovations and dissemination. Whilst using efficiently investments made across Europe in demonstration, testing, and training facilities for practitioners, this novel concept will issue meaningful users-guided recommendations to the EU R&D programme, enhance CBRN product performance and competitiveness, and decrease EU market fragmentation. Only such an interactive and collaborative approach is expected to reach long term sustainability.

Mass-casualty incidents with injured persons caused by human-made or by natural disasters are increasing globally. In such situations, medical first responders (MFR) need to perform basic life support and first aid to help stabilize victims until arrival of further support. Proper evaluation of situations, checking and monitoring the vital states, and choosing the most appropriate strategy for proceeding with treatments are challenges. However, current training abilities for such scenarios are limited. The MED1stMR consortium has identified Mixed Reality (MR) training as opportunity to better train and prepare MFRs for disasters. Thus, MED1stMR will develop a new generation of MR training providing haptic feedback through the integration of high-fidelity patient simulation manikins into MR. Thereby, MED1stMR offers a much richer sensory experience bringing MR training closer to reality. To enhance the effectiveness of MR training a physiological signal and trainee behavior feedback loop will be integrated for scenario control. In this respect, wearable technologies with body sensors will be developed allowing to monitor states and behaviour of MFR during training. Together with a model for effective performance in medical emergencies (EPME) this data will enable adapting training to trainee needs, manually or by artificial intelligence driven smart scenarios. Partnering MFR will be included in the project developments by an Agile End User Centred Research Methodology. To this end, MED1stMR will pursue the following pioneering objectives: a) Developing a pioneering MR training approach for enhanced realism, b) Developing effective training scenarios and a training curriculum through user-centred design with cross-sectoral MFR, c) Realisation of a physiological signal and trainee behaviour feedback loop and EPME model for smart scenario control thereby enhancing effectiveness of MR training and d) To position the pioneering MR training approach across Europe