The E-CITIJENS consortium is gathering again, this time in Bologna (Italy) on 19 November 2019, to put forward the creation of an Emergency Decision Support System (EDSS) Platform that will be tested and used by the Italian and Croatian Civil Protection operational rooms and by a cross-border Functional Centre.
E-CITIJENS is an acronym of “Civil Protection Emergency DSS based on CITIzen Journalism to ENhance Safety of the Adriatic Basin”. The project is financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Italy-Croatia CBC Programme 2014/2020, Prority Axis “Safety and Resiliance”. The E-CITIJENS social media based EDSS was recently presented at the TIEMS Annual Conference in Goyang (South Korea) with a paper by the University of Split.
The E-CITIJENS Project Meeting is co-organised by the Molise Region, coordinator of the initiative, and the University of Bologna, which will host it, and is scheduled to take place between 2:00 and 4:00 pm. The meeting will see the participation of all project partners and particularly of the scientific and technological developers of the platform: the Civil Protection Department of the Molise Region, the University of Split, EuRelations EEIG, the University of Bologna and the Zadar Agency.
With this activity the consortium boosts the creation of a “social media based” Civil Protection Emergency system based on work done previously with a view of comparing and reclassifying current risk scenarios, civil protection management management legislations and social media and crowdsourcing network application across the two cooperation countries.
The scientific group will discuss details of the hardware and software technical and applicative specifications with particular focus on the analysis and aggregation of different real time data stemming from multiple data sources including emergency services’ in/output video interfaces as well as probes, sensors and those provided by citizens through social media.
Such data will be made available to both Italian and Croatian Civil Protection and Coast Guard chains of command and operational units as a single and coherent risk scenario, thereby effectively improving the capacity of civil protection structures to predict and manage natural and man-made disasters.
By including information stemming from the “social media” and using them to assist civil protection risk prevention and management measures, the E-CITIJENS project involves citizens as “active sensors” of emergencies. Citizens are put at the core of a structured awareness raising campaign, consisting of a set of diversified training and informative actions on how to cooperate with civil protection as well as on the proper behaviour and use of social media during hazardous occurrences.
E-CITIJENS is a project co-funded by the INTERREG Italy Croatia CBC Programme 2014 – 2020
