Dear Stakeholder

During this COVID19 emergency we are conscious you are doing your best to face it and to support citizens’ safety and all the project team is proud of your work and would like to tank all of you. If you are able to find a couple of minutes to provide our team some advices how we can make better our research in order to fit your needs we will be grateful.

Thanks again for the wonderful work you are doing all around Europe.

FASTER aims to address the challenges associated with the protection of first responders in hazardous environments, while at the same time enhancing their capabilities in terms of situational awareness and communication. FASTER will provide innovative, accepted and efficient tools covering:
1) Data collection providing a secure Internet of Things (IoT) platform for distributed, real-time gathering and processing of heterogeneous physiological and critical environmental data from smart textiles, wearables, sensors, and Social Media,
2) Operational capabilities providing flexible, multi-functional autonomous vehicles, including swarms of them, for extended inspection capabilities and physical mitigation,
3) Risk assessment providing tools for individual health assessment and disaster scene analysis for early warning and risk mitigation,
4) Improved ergonomics providing augmented reality tools for enhanced information streaming, as well as body and gesture-based interfaces for vehicle navigation and communication,
5) Resilient communication at the field level providing haptic communication capabilities, emergency communication devices, communication with K9s; and at the infrastructure level through 5G technologies and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs),
6) Tactical situational awareness providing innovative visualisation services for a portable Common Operational Picture for both indoor and outdoor scenarios representation. 
7) Efficient Cooperation and Interoperability amongst first responders, Law Enforcements Agencies (LEAs), community members and other resource providers to request and deliver assistance where and when it is most needed using blockchain technology to give everyone involved the ability to write and read data (including sensor data) on an open-source platform to speed up disaster relief to a whole new level.

Nowadays in this COVID 19 emergency the question that arisen was how and if FASTER could provide contribution to emergencies like the one we are facing. The examples could be the use of drones to patrol areas verifying the lockdown or the use of smart wearable to test operators’ safety.

    In the context of Covid-19, our understanding is that: a) in early stages of dealing with the pandemic, quick and effective contact tracing is invaluable to curb the spread, therefore knowing who people interacted with and where (interaction, proximity, and location data) and the use of social media is one of the way to address that; b) in the delay phase, tracing is not the highest priority and instead social distancing is more valued, and data can be used to monitor, develop policy, and for authorities enforce (location data becomes the priority) and drones with other patrolling devices could help in this phase; c) generally tracking the use of public health resources is useful to allocate resources effectively, e.g. where should ventilators and masks and test be deployed (this is mostly logistics and health data held by hospitals and other health providers) d) in the later phases, contact tracing may again be valuable, as can the use of enforcement mechanisms (interaction, proximity, and location data). Most of those tracking have conflicts with the GDPR but COVID19 is an emergency.
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