The Emergency Support System (ESS) is a suite of real-time data-centric technologies which will provide actionable information to crisis managers during abnormal events. This information will enable improved control and management, resulting in real-time synchronization between forces on the ground (police, rescue, firefighters) and out-of-theater command and control centers (C&C).

The approach guiding the ESS project is based on the fusion of variable forms of field-derived data within a central system which will then provide information analysis and decision support applications at designated C&C locations.

To do this, ESS will achieve the following objectives:

i) improvement of front-end data collection technologies (radioactivity, bio-chemical, audio-video, etc.) installed both on portable and fixed platforms, providing a flexible yet comprehensive coverage of the affected area;

ii) this data will then be fused and analyzed to provide real-time decision support;

iii) ESS will make these resources readily available to commanders through the use of easily accesible web-portals.

Thus, ESS will minimize the uncertainty that characterizes crisis events, thereby limiting their scope. The ESS will then be field tested at three different scenarios, including a stadium evacuation, a forest fire and toxic waste dump accidents.

The ESS consortium consists of 19 partners that will bring together a wide spectrum of European SME's, industrial and academic partners from a variety of fields, ranging from sensor design and electronic communications to civil protection. The resulting cooperation will help provide an added measure of security to European citizens.