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Content uploaded by Stefano Marsella
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All content in this area was uploaded by Stefano Marsella on May 11, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
How EU Funded Research Projects have improved
Covid19 Resilience of Rescue and Emergency Control
Rooms
Keywords: interoperability, EDXL-CAP
Common Alerting Protocol, rescue, civil
protection, Covid19, CNVVF, control rooms,
resilience, civil protection
Abstract
The Italian National Fire and Rescue Services
(CNVVF) has been participating since 2006
to EU research projects aimed at improving
rescu e ser v i c e s t h r o u gh th e d e s i g n,
development and implementation of enhanced
capacity for data exchange. The most
important result of such projects is the
possibility to manage complex and large-scale
emergencies using interoperability platform.
Such solution is based mainly on the CAP
standard, that has been adopted by the
CNVVF from 2008. A side effect of such
efforts is the added value of resilience against
the Covid19 pandemic that the interoperabi-
lity platforms and the adoption of a common
data exchange standard can mean in terms of
protection of the operators and continuity of
rescue services in complex emergencies.
1. Introduction
The CNVVF (Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del
Fuoco - Italian National Fire and Rescue
Services) is a nation-wide organisation that,
1
with some 42.000 units (36.000 professional
and 8.000 volunteers) carries out technical
rescue and is recognised by the Civil
protection law as the main component of the
National Civil Protection Service. In such
perspective, the CNVVF needs to maintain a
constant flow of real time information
between all the Authorities involved in
emergency management. Form the daily
rescue operations to the more complex
emergencies, only seldom there’s just one
authority involved. Most often, more of them
must work together, so that they should
possibly reach the scenario with the needed
resources as soon as possible.
The sole application of the art. 26 of EU
directive on universal service [1], about the
adoption of the 112 European Emergency
Ing. Stefano Marsella
Ministero dell'Interno
Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del Fuoco
stefano.marsella@vigilfuoco.it
Prof.Roberto Setola
Università Campus Biomedico di Roma
r.setola@unicampus.it
Ing. Davide Pozzi
Ministero dell'Interno
Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del Fuoco
davide.pozzi@vigilfuoco.it
Ing. Marcello Marzoli
Ministero dell'Interno
Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del Fuoco
marcello.marzoli@vigilfuoco.it
Not including Valle d’Aosta region and Bolzano and Trento provinces, which manage their own services
1
The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020/2014-2020) under grant agreements no 740627 and 740575
/41
Number in every EU member state, is not
suffic i e n t t o g u a r a nt ee th e f l ow of
information that rescue authorities need to
coordinate and cooperate before and during
any operation. In fact, the 112 was born and is
managed to allow citizens to turn to rescuers.
So, a different tool has to be adopted to
im prove dat a ex change be twee n first
responders during the emergency phases.
The faster the flow, the better the rescue is
deployed and, to this end, the most efficient
way to reach the goal of a fast flow of
information is to allow each authority to
manage its own data with its proprietary
system and, at the same time, let it send and
acquire seamlessly data from other authorities
using a common protocol of data exchange.
Figure 1 - Left: The Command and Control room in
the early phases of the Central Italy 2009
Earthquake (in the following days the number of
people nearly doubled). Right: a multi agencies
meeting held in the immediate aftermath of the 7th
July 2005 attacks in London
2. The process of testing and
introducing interoperability in
the CNVVF
When it comes to manage disasters, the
number of the involved authorities is high
enough to make the decision-making process
complex. Fig. 1 shows how the Command
and Control room of the 2009 Central Italy
earthquake had been organised, in order to let
all the different actors to exchange the
enormous quantity of data needed.
The management of such event has been
rightly praised for its efficiency and it was
basically based on direct personal contacts.
Such aspect, was unchanged in the following
large scale events in Italy (earthquakes of
2012 and 2016). However, it shows immedia-
tely its criticality in presence of the Covid19
pandemic: how to let managers and their staff
work and exchange the needed load of data,
while maintaining the social (or physical)
distancing to protect them in the emergency
scenario?
St arting from 2007, the C NVVF has
participated to a number of EU research and
in n o va t i on act i o ns , f o c use d o n t h e
improvement of interoperability of rescue and
civil protection services. In particular, the
CNVVF has been partner in the 6th, 7th and
8th (a.k.a. Horizon 2020) Framewo rk
Programs. PETRAnet (2005-2007), REACT
(2007-2009) [2], SAVEME (2009-2012),
HELI4RESCUE (2011-2013), IDIRA
(2013-2015), STORM (2016-2019), IN PREP
(2018-2020), FIRE IN (2018-2023) and the
STRATEGY projects (2020-2023), which is
going to be kicked off in September 2020. All
these projects have one common element: the
inclusion of specific activities aimed to allow
firs t res p o n d er s a t e xchangi n g da t a
independently from location, language, and
technological barriers.
Some examples can help to understand the
practical application of the interoperability
improvement reached with such projects:
•the main Italian uses of the CAP are the
exchange of data on vegetation fires that
the CNVVF sends to the Carabinieri
Corps, to allow investigations and local
collaborations of various kinds with local
agencies, such as, for example, the one
among the most busy operating rooms
involved in the civil protection activities
in Veneto region, including the water
basin management authorities of large
reservoirs who, having the possibility of
been informed in real time of calls
arriving at the CNVVF on flooding
events, can decide how to regulate water
flows to limit bigger risks.
• the STORM [3] project has showed how
laser scanning techniques can be used
from the first phase of assessing damages
suffered by buildings up to the design of
the provisional works [4]. The system,
remotely accessed, let different authori-
ties and boards to take their decisions and
allowed field operators to work without
delays;
The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020/2014-2020) under grant agreements no 740627 and 740575
/42
• the IN_PREP [5] project have tested in
the desktop exercises held on 2018 in
Foligno and 2019 in Savona (the final
field exercise planned in Savona on
March 2020 has been postponed due to
the Covid19 pandemic), the possibility to
manage local complex emergencies with
a team work from remote. In the
exercises the problems caused by injects
have been faced, resolved and recorded,
within a process that would help all the
participants to give their best without
meeting in the same physical room.
The constant interest of the CNVVF to such
projects as an end user has brought it to
propose and test innovative uses of existing
technologies to improve the service of the
first responders. Obviously, rescue is a
person-operated service, that hardly will ever
be replaced by machines, but the complex
information and data exchange activities that
allow first responders to be deployed
efficiently, especially during large scale
emergencies, still has wide margins for
improvement.
In order to solve the technological aspect of
the problem, the EU has constantly published
research calls over the years emphasising the
importance of data interoperability.
Interoperability, in terms of rescue services,
means the possibility for the different parts to
maintain the proprietary data management
structure while sending and receiving data
that could have been automatically processed
without any further operation [6].
Technically, such development has been
implemented through the adoption of a
standard format of the messages containing
the data to be sent or received. Consensus has
been reached within the projects to use the
CAP (Common Alerting Protocol), which is a
standard born for exchanging public alerts
and warnings between alerting systems [7] .
Over the years such standard has been
adopted in a growing number of emergency
management organisations (i.e. the US
Department of Homeland Security, the
Chinese Civil Protection Agency, the EU
Emergency Response Coordination Centre -
ERCC).
The CNVVF, after the decrees of 2008 and
2011, that established the possibility of
automatically exchanging data useful for
emergency management with all the bodies
involved, has adapted the emergency data
management system, which is now fully
interoperable, having deployed all the
functionalities for a real-time two-way
standard-based data sharing.
Fig. 2 - Every emergency has its specific needs,
also in terms of authorities involved (left). The
solution emerged within the years of research
activity funded by the EU is a not-centralised
structure of data exchange (center), but a network
based only on the adoption of a common standard of
data exchange (right), that lets every single o group
of the authorities involved in the emergency
management to decide which data exchange with
any specific part involved.
3. CAP standard, interoperability
and Covid19 resilience
The first application of CAP in Italy have
been recorded during the 2009 L’Aquila
earthquake: four months after the first shock,
a system capable of managing the process of
ensuring the safety of cultural heritage
buildings has been set up by the CNVVF.
Such test, together with an application aimed
at improvin g th e fo rest f ire fighting
operations in Calabria region in the same
year, has been financed with EU research
funds of the REACT project and proved
immediately the advantages of working on a
technological platform [8].
The test demonstrated an increase of the
effic i e n cy of t h e p r o cesse s (d i g i tal
communication cannot replace personal
contact, but in many situation its accuracy can
help to improve the overall process), which
was not only due to the reduction of the
organisation and movement time of the
meetings, but also to the accuracy of the data
produced. So that, aiming at making rescue
operations more efficient, the EU has also
The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020/2014-2020) under grant agreements no 740627 and 740575
/43
reached the unexpected effect of having laid
the found a t ions to add resil i ence to
emergency management services.
In the case of the Covid19 pandemic, the
CNVFF has experienced that the CAP based
emergency management system has ensured
the continuity of management, protecting
operators through a reduced number of
presence. Even working with a reduction of
some 30% of the back office units (including
the control rooms), the rescue services have
not been affected, as well as the capability of
cooperating with other authorities from
remote, due to the possibility to get data in
any place and in any moment.
4. Discussion
Adopting a common protocol imply investing
funds in the upgrading of the systems that
ma n a ge resc u e o p erat i o n data . Th e
economical effort is not different from normal
maintenance costs of such systems. A
problem that affects many organisations can
be found in the cultural approach to data
exchange. The resistance to open the
information flow to automatic system rather
than keeping a direct control can be
considered the main obstacle to the set-up of
interoperable rescue networks.
The co nsciousness t h a t the Co v i d 19
pandemic could last months or years and,
even not hopefully, could be replaced by
other virus pandemics could be a turning
point in the adoption of really interoperable
n e t w o r k s a im ed a t t h e e m e rg en c y
management.
The alternative is the risk of discovering,
during an emergency, Covid19 infected areas
in the most critical nodes of the control and
command systems.
5. Conclusion
The EU, through the funding of projects
aimed at improving interoperability in rescue
and civil protection activities, has allowed the
relevant authorities to improve their response
systems in case of complex or large-scale
emergencies.
An unexpected result of the approach
financed by the EU research programs is the
possibility for different rescue authorities to
work in a Covid19 resilient mode. The
technological side of the challenge can be
considered substantially overcome. The
nature of the obstacles that the involved
organisations have to face is the adaptation of
their systems. If, previously, the adoption of
interoperable systems could be considered
just an improvement of the services, it is now
the best way to respond to the calamities in
which multiple services have to operate
simultaneously.
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[3]!https://www.in-prep.eu/ ast accessed
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The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020/2014-2020) under grant agreements no 740627 and 740575
/44
