SAVE ME

Many areas in the world have been, and are likely to be affected by severe physical disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc; whereas fire and floods usually occur as immediate results of these incidents. Natural disasters are becoming more frequent and have obvious impacts on transport operations and infrastructure.
In addition to the above, a great menace of our time is terrorism. Transportation infrastructure, hubs and stations are often targets of terrorist attacks because of the easy access and escape for the terrorists and congregations of strangers guarantee the attacker a high degree of anonymity.
Physical disasters and terrorism constitute a great and escalating menace to transportation networks, infrastructure and hubs, with increasing emphasis on areas with high concentrations of people, such as Public Transport terminals/stations and tunnels.

The SAVE ME (System and Actions for VEhicles and transportation hubs to support Disaster Mitigation and Evacuation) EU project aims to develop a system that detects natural and man-made disaster events in public transport terminals / vehicles and critical infrastructures (i.e. tunnels, and bridges) and supports quick and optimal mass evacuation guidance, to save the lives of the general public and the rescuers, giving particular emphasis to the most vulnerable travellers (i.e. children, elderly and disabled).
To achieve this, it develops a common ontological framework for hazard recognition, classification and mitigation, innovative algorithms on human behaviour under stress, panic and strong emotions, standardised interface elements for intuitive human guidance, a holistic disaster mitigation strategy and intelligent agents algorithms for guidance personalisation. It employs a Wireless Sensor Network for emergency detection, environmental awareness and travellers’ position and movements monitoring, as well as a fault tolerant communication network infrastructure. It integrates simulator model data with real time data from these sensors, to reach enhanced crowd behaviour models and uses them in a Decision Support System, to supervise the overall disaster mitigation operation. Thus, it supports the infrastructure operator, guides the rescue team through PDA and the trapped travellers by environmental displays and audio systems, as well as personalised guidance in their mobile phone to the nearest safe and free exit, taking into account their profile (i.e. disability, agility, language, etc.). It also develops appropriate training curricula, content and tools for operators, rescuers and the general public; guidelines to the infrastructure / vehicle operators and designers and standardisation proposals to the policy makers.

All project developments are thoroughly and iteratively tested and optimised by lab tests as well as in two pilot sites, at a metro station in Newcastle (UK) and inside a road tunnel in Umbria (Italy).

The SAVE ME Consortium consists of 11 contractors from seven countries with high competence related to the SAVE ME objectives, with respect to the various scientific, technological and application areas.

Consortium:

– University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK)
– Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Hellenic Institute of Transport – Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Informatics and Telematics Institute (Greece)
– SIMUDYNE L.t.d (UK)
– Dipartimento dei Vigili del Fuoco, del Soccorso Pubblico e della Difesa Civile (Italy)
– IES Solutions srl (Italy)
– Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain)
– University of Basel, Department of Psychiatry, Center of Applied Technologies in Neuroscience (Switzerland)
– Baudirektion Uri (Switzerland)
– Mizar Automazione S.p.A. (Italy)
– Universität Stuttgart (Germany)
– Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy)

Click here for the project page on Cordis.

Click here for the summary report, or here for its pdf version.