| abstract: |
Effective EU support to a large external crisis requires new approaches. In response to this challenge and to identified user and market needs from previous projects, Reaching Out proposes an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that will optimize the efforts, address a wide spectrum of users and maximize market innovation success.
This approach results in five main objectives: to
1. Develop a Collaborative Framework, with distributed platforms of functional services,
2. Implement a flexible and open “collaborative innovation” process involving users and SMEs, suppliers, operators and research organisations,
3. Develop, upgrade and integrate 78 new connectable and interoperable tools,
4. Conduct 5 large scale demonstrations on the field:
o health disaster in Africa (Epidemics in Guinea, with strong social and cultural issues),
o natural disaster in a politically complex region and a desert environment (Earthquake in the Jordan Valley, led jointly by Jordan, Israel and Palestine),
o three global change disasters in Asia targeted at large evacuation and humanitarian support in Bangladesh (long lasting floods, huge storms and associated epidemics,), EU citizen support and repatriation in Shanghai (floods & storm surge), radiological and industrial disasters impacting EU assets in Taiwan (flash floods, landslides, storm surge and chemical and radiological disasters), supported and co-funded by local authorities,
5. Provide recommendations and evaluations for future legal and policy innovations.
The project will be conducted under the supervision of senior end-users. It will be performed with flexible and proven procedures by a balanced consortium of users, industry, innovative SMEs, RTO and academia in the EU and the demonstration regions.
The main expected impact is to improve external disaster and crisis management efficiency and cost-benefit and increase the EU visibility whilst enhancing EU industry competitiveness and enlarging the market. |
