Projects

SMR- Smart Mature Resilience (2015-2018)

The 21^st Century has been termed “the century of disasters”. Worldwide there were twice as many disasters and catastrophes in the first decade of this century as in the last decade of the 20^th Century. Europe is no exception: our continent is affected directly and indirectly. And the trend continues, fuelled by climate change and social dynamics.

The need for resilience is emphasized. But how to best deal with known risks and prepare for the unexpected is enormously complex and still nascent. The much needed operationalization of resilience – the breaking down of the resilience concept into a holistic framework of measurable interventions – must be seen as a directed dynamic process: a process that unfolds over time following the resilience management guideline.

Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) will develop and validate Resilience Management Guideline, using three pilot projects covering different security sectors in Critical Infrastructures, as well as climate change and social dynamics, as a prototype to European Resilience Management Guideline. SMR’s Resilience Management Guideline will provide a robust shield against man-made and natural hazards, enabling society to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, as well as plan for, including through the preservation and restoration of essential structures and functions. The following set of tools operationalize five crucial interdependent supporting structures of SMR’s Resilience Management Guideline:

1) A Resilience Maturity Model defining the trajectory of an entity (system, community or society) through measurable resilience levels; 2) a Systemic Risk Assessment Questionnaire that, beyond assessing the entity’s risk, determines its resilience maturity level;

3) A portfolio of Resilience Building Policies that enable the entity’s progression towards higher maturity levels;

4) A System Dynamics Model (computer simulation model) that embodies the Resilience Maturity Model, allowing to diagnose, monitor and explore the entity’s resilience trajectory as determined by resilience building policies, and, last not least,

5) A Resilience Engagement and Communication Tool to integrate the wider public in community resilience, including public-private cooperation.

Web: www.smr-project.eu

ELITE - Elicit to Learn Crucial Post-Crisis Lessons (2013-2014)

Learning lessons from others who have experienced similar situations is probably the most important step that people involved with crisis management can take to ensure that they are not left flatfooted when they are needed most. In the wake of one of these events, crisis managers and first-responders analyse the actions they have taken, looking at what worked well and what did not. This is then turned into a report that highlights the most important lessons learned. At present, however, there is no real platform that facilitates the sharing of this knowledge. Vital information is thus not being transferred to the people who need it most, which can lead to the same mistakes being made over and over again. The ELITE project is an eighteen-month FP7-funded project that has been working to bridge this communication gap. Its main aim has been firstly to create a community of practice (ELITE CoP) in order build trust among stakeholders, and secondly to create the ELITE living document. The ELITE living document is a web solution that comprises a repository of lessons learned and best practices from disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes and floods, as well as those that are common across these disaster types. TheELITE living document is maintained according to a ‘wiki’ philosophy by the ELITE CoP, guaranteeing the continuous update of information.

Technology is currently highly efficient at collecting data, but processing this data into knowledge that can be transferred to others is still a human process. There is a significant amount of technology that supports capturing and sharing real time information about the evolution of a crisis, but developing critical reports on what was done to improve future preparation and response should still be done by knowledgeable people. The ELITE project is not only about developing technologies, but also about developing a community of practice where knowledge can be created, shared and criticised. After the project, the community will own the tools and methods needed to implement an efficient learning and sharing process.

Web: www.elite-eu.org

SEMPOC - Simulation Exercise to Manage POwer cut Crisis (2009-2011)

SEMPOC is an Integrated Project in the framework of European CIPS strategic objective named "Prevention Preparedness and Consequence Management of Terrorism and other Security-related risks".

SEMPOC intends to introduce the simulation exercises as a valuable tool to identify and analyze the vulnerabilities in power production and distribution network. Crises have long incubation times therefore numerous warnings remain undetected or ignored. It is important to recognize triggering events and possible cascading effects. For this we must target precursor events in a transnational interdependent power grid and how to detect them.

This project aims to integrate into a holistic simulation model, all the significant elements of the long-term lifecycle of a power cut crisis, including technical, economic, political and social aspects. Such a model will be useful in adressing the above mentioned issues and will result in recommendations to improve security.

Web: www.sempoc.eu

SKILLS (2006 - 2011)

SKILLS is an Integrated Project in the framework of european IST FP6 strategic objective named " Multimodal Interfaces" and deals with the acquisition, interpretation, storing and transfer of human skill by means of multimodal interfaces, Robotics, Virtual Environments (VE) technologies and Interaction Design methodologies. SKILLS intends to introduce a novel approach to skill capturing, transfer and assessment based on enactive paradigms of interaction between the human operator and the interface system devoted to mimic task conditions. Skill analysis adopts cognitive sciences and interaction design methodologies in order to obtain a digital representation of skill and to develop techniques for its capturing and rendering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8r21vRDTig

SISCOM (2004-2005)

The combination of Virtual Reality and Haptics is an useful tool used to carry out maintenance tasks in complex systems such as aeronautics. The development of virtual mock-ups allows analyzing their design in order to verify the accesibility of all their parts and to discover maintainability issues earlier and thus saving money by reducing the amount of physical mock-ups required. The research involved in the project concerns two main areas: mechanical design (modifying the design of our haptic device called LHIfAM from 3DoF to 6DoF), and software development providing a stable haptic forces and torques, needed to develop the maintenance tasks. Both of them deal with important challenges since system maintenance simulation needs to be very close to reality.

TRAINING SIMULATOR FOR DRIVING (2004-2006)

Simulation has taken on a very important role today for the industrial activity in all sectors. Simulators are developed for industrial processes, capital investments, surgical operations, space missions and much more. More and more companies from all different sectors use simulation to carry out their activity as in this way they can foresee the result of a practice or system before putting it into operation.

The development of specific learning tools using the latest technologies, as well as advances made in the design of methodologies used in assessment, analysis and user interface validation, have represented a considerable step forward in risk control and accident reduction. They also permit research in different fields of human behaviour under adverse conditions.

The use of simulators for training purposes gives rise to greater efficiency and a considerable reduction of accident risks, making work much safer and more effective. Furthermore, there are endless situations that would be too costly or impossible to train without using simulation. The possibilities of customising the exercises for the training needs of each person make it very effective. Students can repeat the exercises until they have fully understood all the concepts.

TARVITEK (2002-2004)

Its main aim is to promote basic research into Virtual Reality oriented to the needs of the nowadays global environment, in order to contribute to the scientific-technological, economical and social objectives of the Basque Country.

The project created a vanguard of centres adopting a group of technologies that are essential for the development of the Information Society, favouring the creation of a "Basque excellence network" in the field of Virtual and Augmented technologies. In this way, the Basque Country will be provided with the necessary infraestructure in technicians as well as in resources for the development of Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Virtual Prototypes : They include the virtual prediction and representation of the behaviour of products and processes. To be able to carry out the design of the project based on virtual prototypes, it is necessary to develop simulation tools which are not yet available in traditional systems.

Augmented Reality : This technology allows the user to see the real world augmented with additional computer generated information. In this project, a platform for the development of Augmented/Mixed Reality applications is going to be developed.

Human-machine Interfaces : It deals with new multisensorial interaction interfaces, which are capable of understanding and interpreting the natural expressions of human persons.

Simulation Kernels : this research line aims to implement a new generic software platform which permits to create new simulation models capable of reaching greater realism in computer simulation.

Visualization : Finally, new technologies and philosophies of calculation will be studied so as to improve the speed of per second image generation and achieve a better realism sensation in tridimensional environments.