The last field test of the ESS project took place successfuly in the area of Vescavo near the French-Italian borders. The test was combined with an annual exercise of the French Fire Brigades and involved emergency and crisis management organizations from both France and Italy. The scenario that was tested concerned the crash of an airplane and the propgation of a forest fire from France to Italy. The ESS solution was used for  collecting data and information from the incident area using the ESS ad hoc, mesh network and creating a unified common operational picture at the incident command post, which was shared further with all the involved services outside the area of incident using a satelite internet connection.

The ESS crisis management solution  was presented during the «Second Symposium in Man Made Disasters» organized by the Cyprus Safety Platform in Nicosia (CY) the 30th of January 2013. The event was organized  jointly by the European University of Cyprus and the Center for Environmental Safety. The ESS related presentation entitled "Operational use of the Emergency Support System (ESS) as a crisis management platform" was made by KEMEA, the Center for Security Studies of the Hellenic Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection. The presentation focused to the experience and ESS systems  familiarization gained by KEMEA in context of its participation in the ESS field tests.

Operational use of the Emergency Support System (ESS) as a crisis management platform

A specific session concerning the ESS project (TUE1.1: ESS project – technical and conceptual challenges) was organized by Magen David Adom in Davos, Switzerland in context of the 4th International Disaster Risk Conference "IDRC 2012" the 28/12/2012. The ESS session of IDRC 2012 was organized in four technical sections concerning the ESS technological challenges, the End-User perspective, the evaluation of the field tests organized by the ESS consortium and concluded with a demonstration of the ESS web portal and its functionalities.

 IMEGO, the ESS partner responsible for the development of the sensors module which is integrated into the ESS prototype, has been merged with ACREO as from 1/4/2012. Thus IMEGO contribution will appear as ACREO in future activity of the ESS project. Read the official announcement here below:

The ESS field test took place in Nimes on Saturday the 24th of March 2012. The test included the deployment of the ESS system in order to address a simulated risk of a flood event during a night time soccer match of the Nimes local team. The system was connected to the Internet via Eutelsat's satellite KA-SAT. Two baloons and a car mounted surveillance units have been deployed for monitoring the area, two sensor nodes of a wireless network were setup on-site while French Police and Fire Brigades cooperated with the ESS consortium providing two cars for comunicating and reporting simulated incidents to the ESS web portal. The Joint Command Post operated in the field test site was managed by Col. Claude Picard with the participation of the Prefecture, the Fire Service of Gard, Meteo-France and the French Police.