Warsaw hosts the first Driver+ testbed trial
From 21 to 25 May the Warsaw headquarters of Main School of Fire Service (SGSP) hosted the first of the four trials scheduled for the DRIVER+ project (Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience).
Driver +, a European Commission, FP7-financed project, aims to come up with an answer to the current and future challenges posed by the increasingly serious consequences of natural disasters and terrorist attacks. In pursuit of this overarching aim the project will assess and implement groundbreaking solutions that can be used jointly to cope with the various types of large-scale crises. This involves the holding of four trials and a final demonstration to investigate innovative solutions under simulated crisis conditions, doing so by (1) gradually adapting them to operational constraints, (2) encouraging acceptance among users through their active involvement and (3) showing decision makers that they are cost-effective.
Each one of the trials, to be held, respectively, in Poland, France, the Netherlands and Austria, will provide priceless feedback for the pan-European testbed being developed under the project. The DRIVER+ testbed will create a unique opportunity for a transformative change by developing a coherent infrastructure for trialing solutions well into the future. This will open up the pooling and sharing of resources across Europe, allowing experience from trialing in different contexts to cross-fertilize.
The results of the assessment of the solutions will be stored in the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS), a website that describes the capabilities of all the available DRIVER+ solutions. The PoS will then be made available to any external organization, enabling it to share data and experiences on its own solutions. This should in turn pave the way for successful implementation and use of solutions by other practitioners.
As well as participating in all DRIVER+ subprojects, GMV is also helping to work towards a pan-European testbed to deal with crises. Furthermore, the solutions included in the PoS, all of which will be put through their paces during project trials, take in GMV’s complete SOCRATES OC operating center.
Specifically, in this first trial, GMV has acted as coordinator of all included solutions while also adapting SOCRATES OC for participation in the defined scenario.