With a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population of about two million people, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina occupies the northernmost part of Serbia. Novi Sad, its administrative centre, is the second largest city in the country.

While Novi Sad is heading towards recognition as a regional leader in the IT industry, Vojvodina’s economy mainly relies on agriculture and agribusiness.

The challenge

The Vojvodina Province is particularly affected by the phenomenon of stubble burning, a common practice in cultivated fields in Serbia, which threatens the health and safety of the territory.

In 2019, around 19.000 open fires were recorded in Serbia. 14 people died because of them and 40 were injured. The fires burned low vegetation, but also damaged forests, meadows, orchards, cereals, and vineyards.

To discourage farmers from burning the remains of their crops, the province’s public authorities need precise and reliable information on the location of this practice.

The satellite solution

With the support of the BıoSense Instıtute, UNDP Serbia created a web GIS portal to detect open fıres usıng data from Sentınel-2 satellites.

By comparing two consecutive images, one before the fire occurrence and the other after the fire, an algorithm detects the areas where fires happened and the potentially burned areas. These spots are visualised on an interactive web map that is made openly and freely available to the public: the Portal for Mapping Harvest Residues (www.dim.rs/#/dashboard).

The map was funded by UNDP Serbia through the “Challenge call for innovative solutions to reduce air pollution in Serbia and improve air quality”.

The results

The portal is used by the UNDP, research institutes and local administrations to raise the awareness of people, farmers in the first place, about the threats posed by stubble burning. Moreover, the portal allows the government to detect stubble burning and to undertake evidence-based actions against this practice.

In the Vojvodina Province, the methodology used to develop the portal was tested during three months (from September to November 2020), spotting over 9.000 parcels that were subject to crop residue burning.

On dim.rs, fires are classified according to the dates on which they occurred and cadastral information. The webGIS portal also contains statistics on fire occurrence history that is available for download, and information for citizens on how to report illegal burnings.

Users can know which areas are the most affected by crop residue burning and in which periods of the year. Altogether, this information enables local administrations (such as police forces, firefighters and forest authorities, among others) to be better prepared to the occurrence of stubble burning, to target awareness raising campaigns, to better plan in-situ inspections, and to sustain law enforcement.

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Ekodenge is a Turkish SME with a team of sustainability experts, providing consultancy, engineering, architecture, and software solution services.

Created in 1996, Ekodenge is headquartered in Ankara, at the Hacettepe Technopark research and business centre. The company can count on a multi-disciplinary team of 40 people, including architects, chemical, environmental and mechanical engineers.

The challenge

Climate change is exposing historical and cultural sites to threats such as floods, wildfires and heatwaves, among others. Data on land cover is critical to understand these hazards, as well as to monitor changes around cultural heritage sites.

Even though spatial information becomes more and more abundant thanks to global Earth Observation (EO) systems, spatial data collected by different entities for different regions of the world still lack standardisation and harmonisation.

Since 2019 Ekodenge is part of the Consortium implementing the Horizon 2020 SHELTER project (Sustainable Historic Environments holistic reconstruction through Technological Enhancement and community-based Resilience). The project involves 23 partners from 10 countries.

SHELTER includes five test beds, representing the main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

Ekodenge is responsible for creating a risk assessment tool visualised on a Geographic Information System (GIS), containing information on land use, that can used to foresee resilience and threats to the heritage and to plan recovery measures. To do this, Ekodenge needs accurate information on land cover in the sites targeted by the project.

The satellite solution

To build the platform for disaster risk management in the areas targeted by the project, Ekodenge uses data on land cover and climate and historical data from the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites of the Copernicus programme.

The historical data allow them to retrace soil movements, changes in landcover, and weather events, such as heatwaves and floods, that damaged the cultural heritage sites in the past. These data are integrated in the datadriven platform for disasters risk management produced within the project.

The Copernicus data is particularly useful for this kind of assessments, since the data are freely available across Europe and accessible in the same format. This means that the data acquired through Copernicus allow Ekodenge to calibrate all different and site-specific data to be used into the same platform. Moreover, the information contained in the platform for each site can be easily compared and updated.

The results

Thanks to Copernicus data, Ekodenge can acquire data on land cover for the five different areas targeted in the open labs in a harmonised and standardised format.

The platform not only includes information relevant for safeguarding cultural heritage, but also for protecting natural heritage and human settlements from natural disasters and climate change at the regional level.

The GIS platform developed by the partners of the SHELTER project will contribute to building a model to improve the resilience of cultural heritage sites through better decision-making processes and policies applicable at local and regional levels.

All data will be made available on an IT platform after the project ends in 2023. Based on the information regrouped in the platform, the project partners will propose measures to increase the resilience of cultural heritage sites and make recommendations on “building back better” techniques.

The platform is intended to be used by all the stakeholders operating in the sites targeted by the SHELTER project, such as policymakers, fire brigades, construction companies, and research institutes.

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DSE-Data Science Experts is a company created in 2020 and focused on building products and solutions based on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Based in Grenoble, France, the company today employs 11 people. The team’s vision is to help insurance companies to better support the agriculture sector in times of natural disasters.

The challenge

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes, the number of disasters related to a weather, climate or water hazard has increased by a factor of five between 1970 and 2019 globally. Agrıculture is among the sectors that are affected the most by climate-related disasters.

To establish mechanisms, and in particular insurance schemes, to support the recovery of agricultural activities affected by disasters, there is a growing need for data and information to foresee and assess such damages.

The satellite solution

AIperion is a system, developed by DSE, that estimates the damage affecting agricultural fields, identifies the boundaries of flooded and burned areas, and detects the extent, impact and duration of droughts based on extreme weather events or natural disasters.

The system is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to Earth observation images to identify and detect the boundaries of flooded and burned areas. It integrates meteorological data from the MSG mission (Meteosat Second Generation satellites) to detect the intensity and duration of extreme weather events.

AIPerion relies on data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions to calculate vegetation indices and estimate agricultural damage.

These analyses are combined to produce an assessment of the level of damage to the crops and of its causes. The results are provided to customers through a dashboard, in the form of maps and figures.

The results

By integrating Copernicus data into their software, DSE can provide precise information on the crops’ health and determine if the damage to crop reported by farmers is a consequence of natural disasters and not of fraud attempts.

Moreover, based on the information provided by DSE, insurance companies can determine the premium to be paid for crop losses caused by natural disasters.

Under the request of one insurance company, using this system DSE was able to map 80% of cultivated fields on the French territory to detect the growth status of vegetation. That was made possible thanks to the high temporal resolution of the Copernicus data and could not have been done by using in-situ surveying techniques.

Using free and open Copernicus data, DSE can provide its services at a much lower cost than the price that they would ask if they used other paying satellite data. As a result, after only one year of existence, the company can count some of the world’s biggest insurance companies among their customers.

In 2020, the AIPeiron system has been awarded the Copernicus Masters Prize for France.

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Castilla–La Mancha is a Spanish autonomous community located in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula’s Inner Plateau. The community occupies an area of 79,463 km2, including over 3.5 million hectares of forests, which represent 13% of the whole Spanish forests.

INFOCAM, integrated in the Regional Department of Sustainable Development, leads the integral management of forest fires in Castilla-la Mancha. INFOCAM performs its tasks in coordination with all the departments of the Government of Castilla-La Mancha, with local and provincial entities, and with the companies and private owners that are involved in sustainable rural development.

The Analysis and Planning Unit (UNAP) of INFOCAM issues periodical forest fire risk reports, that are used to enforce preparedness and response to forest fires.

The challenge

In the summer of 2021, major forest fires led to both ecological and economic losses in Spain. Of all Spain’s regions, Castilla-La Mancha is the one with the most municipalities in high fire-risk areas, with a total of 780.

To limit the damage of fires on forests and take better preventive measures to avoid them, INFOCAM needs to monitor the conditions of the vegetation, as vegetation stress makes it prone to combustion, due to drought and high temperatures in summer or freeze in winter.

The satellite solution

Copernicus provides data on vegetation related to phenology, photosynthesis activity, and vegetation stress.

INFOCAM uses data from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 satellites to estimate the density of green in the region and the amount of green and alive elements of the vegetation. This information is important to know the amount of vegetation that could be available for potential fires and is crucial to reduce uncertainty, especially with regard to emergency preparedness.

The results

The maps and the data concerning the forest fire risks are provided to the stakeholders through a web-GIS (Geographic Information System) and daily reports that are distributed to the entities in charge of managing forests and fire risks.

Remote sensing data provided by Copernicus represent a crucial tool to support fire services before the fire season starts and enable them to activate resources and procedures.

During emergencies, when fires are being managed, the satellites provide fire managers with information about the spatial distribution of the fire risk that is useful to design operational plans for fire extinction.

Based on the information on the fire risks contained in the maps, the region can increase or move resources (e.g., helicopters, fire engines and fire brigades) from prevention tasks to firefighting tasks in time.

Moreover, combined with wind and meteorological data, the maps allow for the forecasting of fire spreads into nearby areas.

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Port-la-Nouvelle is a French town in the Occitanie region, in the south of France, on the Mediterranean coast.

The historic port of Port-la-Nouvelle extends over 2.5 kilometres, and it represents a major economic asset in the area. Owned by the Region, it includes a commercial port, a fishing harbour, and a marina. The Chamber of Commerce of Aude is responsible for its daily management. This commercial port has historically specialised in the import of oil and the export of cereals.

The challenge

In 2018, the Occitanie region decided to start important works to adapt the commercial port of Port-la-Nouvelle to new traffics and allow for the development of new sectors.

Notably, the regional plan foresees the installation of floating wind-turbines and the creation of a green hydrogen production plant as from 2024. These works are part of a regional policy that aims at combining the economic development of the region with the valorisation of its environment.

Carrying out the works around the harbour implied dredging, which could bring back to the surface sediments on the seafloor, hence endangering the marine environment and the natural areas nearby.

To guarantee that the port expansion works were carried out sustainably, the Directorate for the Sea needed a reliable water quality monitoring system in the area of the works.

The satellite solution

i-SEA- a company based in Aquitaine, supported the port authorities to monitor water turbidity nearby the works, by using data from the Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 Copernicus satellites. The satellites provided data on water turbidity in the past and the near future.

Before the works started, satellite imagery allowed I-SEA and the Region to better understand the hydro-sedimentary processes of the site of Port-la-Nouvelle. During the works, the data contributed to in-situ monitoring, by providing a big  picture of water turbidity levels and a forecast of the turbidity levels expected within the next three days.

The results

Thanks to the Copernicus data, it was possible to avoid damage to the nearby natural areas and to prevent the infiltration of a turbid plume in the nearby pond of Bages Sigean.

The predictive method provided the personnel responsible the works in the Region with daily objective tools to monitor the impact of the expansion of the port on water turbidity and to adapt the works according to the forecasted turbidity levels.

In 2024, the commercial harbour of Port-la-Nouvelle will welcome the first floating wind turbines in the Mediterranean Sea. This operation is part of a regional strategy to achieve sustainable development in the littoral by using technology to boost the local economy, while safeguarding the environment.

“We do our best efforts to ensure that economic development is based on the safeguard and valorisation of the region’s natural resources”. Benjamin Grente, Directorate for the Sea, Occitanie Region.

READ THE FULL STORY: Monitoring water turbidity in Port la Nouvelle

BlackShore is a company founded in 2011 by Hans van’ t Woud and hosted by the ESA Business Incubation Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Currently, BlackShore delivers accurate, up-to-date and low-cost map products and data labels based on the crowd-sourced interpretation of satellite data and aerial imagery to map what matters most in the world.

The challenge

As the region of the world that is the most affected by water scarcity, Africa has such a growing population that about 230 million Africans are expected to face water scarcity, and approximately 460 million could be living in water-stressed areas by 2025 [1].

Recognised as a human right in 2010 and 2015, access to safe drinking water and sanitation remains fundamental to the lives of all human beings and the issue is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [2].

Climate change exacerbates water scarcity, while also endangering the sustainable provision of food all over the world, including in the Mediterranean region. In this area, cereals and wheat are strategic products for agricultural development, food security, and agricultural trade.

However, and especially following the Ukrainian crisis, the cereal production deficit in the region could worsen in the next twenty years (Ukraine is one of the big cereal exporters to the region and in Middle East countries) [3].

To stay at the forefront of innovation, BlackShore decided to build an interactive platform which would combine e-learning, gaming and crowdsourcing to solve global issues, for example improving management of water and food.

The platform needed to create a playful and stimulating environment that would attract players and enable them to empower their skills while arousing their curiosity.

The solution

BlackShore developed Cerberus, an online gaming platform using very high resolution satellite images (currently down to 30-cm resolution data) to zoom in the surface of the Earth as a key resource.

The game teaches players how to identify and map pre-defined features such as obstructed roads, flooded zones, or clear-cut areas. Working with satellite images to make useful operational maps for organisations such as governments, urban planners or emergency services gives players a sense of purpose, in addition to being fun.

BlackShore uses a combination of commercial satellite data and open and free Sentinel data as a layer in their games. Players can navigate the surface of the Earth to spot, report and share relevant information.

Missions displayed around the world in BlackShore’s Cerberus Game.

BlackShore teaches players what to look for to map and tag in the hexagons. The inputs of players are compared to verify the accuracy of the information collected.

Hexagons as displayed in BlackShore’s Cerberus Game.

One of the games on Cerberus, “The path to a well”, has been developed with the AKVO Foundation to favour access to drinking water in Mali.

Based in the Netherlands, the Foundation works on water-related issues in the African continent. In Mali, they worked with Uduma, an African NGO, to install water pumps within the framework of a project funded by the African Development Bank.

BlackShore helped the AKVO Foundation to acquire information on fresh water sources and to map the infrastructure between water source and communities, like farms or roads.

Players created two referable maps using very high-resolution satellite data in which they could detect objects of 50 centimetres to distinct walking paths from roads which can have vehicles. This information was later used to calculate travel times between water source and livelihood.

Another project hosted on the Cerberus platform and recently launched aims at mapping cereal production in the Mediterranean Region of Europe.

In a sequence of 20 maps, BlackShore will take up the crowd in a journey from east to west and ask them as a primary target to focus on Durum (pasta) cereals. Moreover, players will be also asked to map other crops, infrastructure and features based on the region of the Earth that they are zooming in. These include Lavender from the Provence, ruins in Greece, energy grids in Spain and mines in the Marche.

The project will measure the impact of climate change on durum cereal production in Italy, France, Spain, Greece and the Mediterranean islands.

To enable players to map cereal production, BlackShore has produced labelled training data to be used in conjunction with Sentinel-2 and (optionally) Sentinel-1 data down to a 30-centimetre resolution on the entire Mediterranean area.

Through the inputs of the players, the Artificial Intelligence model embedded in the game will progressively learn to distinguish crops in different environments autonomously and will generate data labels of the crops and infrastructure in the entire area.

The project is a joint operation of BlackShore, 52 Impact B.V., and The Hague Center for Strategic Studies, and it is supported by the European Space Agency (The ESA Φ-lab).

The results

In Mali, the Cerberus’ players mapped an area of approximately 10 square kilometres, detecting potential fresh water sources and providing data that were used by local actors to build and maintain water pumps.

For their new “mission” to map cereal production in the Mediterranean area, in 2022 only, BlackShore plans to create 20 maps of durum cereal crops using very high-resolution data and data labels for the different crops.

The maps generated through the game will be made openly available for researchers, NGOs, and governmental institutions to take measures to ensure food security.

Indeed, the project will generate a data label set allowing researchers to build models to automatically monitor how Durum cereals are affected in a changing world. This knowledge shall be used to better anticipate the effects of climate change on crops and to take measures to mitigate them. All generated labels will be also shared through ESA’s AI4EO Initiative.

Currently, BlacksShore’s Cerberus  community is about to overcome 100 000 players, based in almost every country of the world and ready to take action to contribute understanding and solving some of today’s’ most pressing issues.

Most players like playing BlackShore’s games on their phones, but they can also be played on iPads and computers.

By combining satellite imagery and gaming, BlackShore is demonstrating that everyone can learn to identify features on satellite imagery if properly trained, and it is opening the path to innovative uses of EO to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

REFERENCES

[1] The Africa Water Vision for 2025: Equitable and Sustainable Use of Water for Socioeconomic Development, UN Water/Africa. Accessed on 21 June 2022.

[2] UN World Water Development Report 2019: ‘Leaving no one behind’, 2019. Accessed on 19 June 2022.

[3] Food security: Challenges and perspectives in the Mediterranean region, PRIMA, 29 June 2022. Accessed on 10 June 2022.

MedAssist.online

MedAssist.online is a Dutch company founded in 2015 based in the Port of Rotterdam. Its mission is to provide the best possible medical care to people in areas where medical assistance is not available. Originally, the company provided exclusively physical medical training to maritime officers and captains, and it then moved towards a more innovative path to support vessel crews.

The Challenge

Providing medical support to people in remote areas is very challenging. Telemedicine has proved to be a game-changer in multiple occasions, especially during medical emergencies at sea. Ship crews can spend weeks far out at sea, often thousands of miles away from the nearest shore. At sea, medical emergencies happen daily, and regular ships have no doctor on board.

Just in Europe, every year there are on average 21.000 telemedicine consultations at sea, and this number is constantly increasing. Depending on the medical need, vessels are often forced to change their plans, diverting their course, and extending the duration of their trip. To provide crews with better and faster care, an additional telemedicine tool was needed.

The Satellite Solution

The  meets the need of ship crews to get medical assistance at any moment and anywhere. It relies on satellite communication and a patented Two-Ways-Augmented-Reality (TWAR) technology. The Live App is available for download on any mobile device on Play Store and App Store. Satellite ship-to-shore-to-ship communication provides an essential feature to make the Live app work at sea. With support from ESA and the Netherlands Space Office, the TWAR technology (with two-way audio/video feed) was optimised for reliable use over satellite connections. Once they download the app, users can create their profile and require live assistance. They can also access tutorials or create new ones in case of specific accidents. Using TWAR, the application combines two video feeds — from and to the ship and the doctor — into one identical ‘shared reality’, visible to both the doctor and the ship’s officer.

Unlike in usual video calls, participants can work together from the same perspective. TWAR allows the medical professional to instruct, point out, guide and coach the ship’s officer as if the two were physically in the same place: they can examine and treat a patient as if the doctor were on board, or the doctor can show to the officer what to do. The officers on board will see the hands of the doctor superimposed on their owns on the screen and will be guided in their movements live.

The results

The Live App helps crews or people in remote locations to get the best possible medical care anytime and anywhere. It also reduces the human and financial costs of medical emergencies at sea.

The app has been tested by both KLM and onshore medical staff and has already been positively evaluated by several shipping companies. Currently, the app is being used all over Europe, especially by Dutch and German shipping companies. Soon, it will be also available for users in Asia and America. Considering the importance of providing medical assistance to people in remote areas, the team at MedAssist is planning to tailor the app for other contexts, such as rural areas, where connectivity still represents a challenge.

The Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) is a non-governmental organisation tasked with collecting data from seismological observatories in 81 institutes across 57 countries.

The challenge

In order to alert concerned populations and the public authorities responsible for activating rescue forces, the EMSC needs to locate earthquakes in almost real-time.

The satellite solution

To detect earthquakes that can be felt by humans, the EMSC relies on the use of the word “earthquake” on Twitter in various languages and it closely monitors its website traffic, as well as of the use of its mobile app LastQuake. By compiling this information, the EMSC can automatically detect felt earthquakes before seismic information is available (typically within 15 to 90 seconds).

The LastQuake app allows earthquake witnesses to report seismic events directly to the EMSC and to automatically locate the epicentre and assess damages through their Smartphone built-in GNSS receiver. It can be downloaded free of charge and is currently being used by 360 000 people worldwide.

The results

When using the app, witnesses are asked to report about the perceived shaking or the damages seen through a set of user friendly cartoons. Through the app, they have also the possibility to share geo-located photos and videos of the affected areas.

By combining mobile and internet technologies, the EMSC is able to provide the public with real-time information on seismic events and post-earthquakes safety tips. The app also allows users to send messages via SMS to their family and friends to confirm they are safe and to share information on social media.

Within a few minutes, the information supplied through the app allows the EMSC to automatically map the earthquake’s impact with eyewitnesses acting as real-time motion sensors.

On 15 January 2018, the LastQuake app allowed EMSC to detect a 4.4 Magnitude earthquake close to Athens (Greece) in 24 seconds thanks to 544 real-time testimonies.  Seismographers needed 292 seconds to detect and locate the same event. A similar example is related again to Athens, when on 19^th July 2019 the earth trembled again. EMSC detected a 5.1 Magnitude earthquake.

The Municipality of Lemvig, on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark, has a population of 21 500. The Municipality covers an area of more than 500 km2, including the towns of Lemvig and Thyborøn-Harboøre. Lemvig is surrounded by water, with three fjords on its southern borders and a string of islands on its western perimeter.

Lemvig Vand og Spildevand (Lemvig Water and Wastewater) is the private supply company (100% owned by the Municipality of Lemvig) in charge of managing 575 km of waste-water pipeline and 580 km of drinking-water pipelines in the area.

The challenge

Lemvig Vand og Spildevand noticed that, while pipelines in the area had an average life of 75 years, pipes in Thyborøn would only last 30 years. Afterwards, the pipes had to be changed, which implied an effort both in terms of money and human resources. Moreover, substituting the pipes also causes inconveniences to residents during the necessary works.

Trying to understand what caused pipes in Thyborøn to degradate faster than in the rest of the Municipality, the company noticed that soil in Thyborøn would subside more than in other areas. Hence, they started looking for a tool that would allow them to monitor soil subsidence, better place the assets and intervene promptly on damaged pipes. The company had a long-term experience with precision levelling, but wanted a system to automatically monitor soil deformation throughout time while minimising the need for site inspections.

The satellite solution

In the late Nineties, Lemvig Vand og Spildevand decided to start using InSAR data to monitor soil subsidence in the area. The experience proved successful. Between 2014 and 2016, the European Union and the European Space Agency launched Sentinel 1, a constellation of two satellites with a high spatio-temporal resolution and coverage whose data is freely available. Thanks to a collaboration with the Lemvig municipality, the Danish Costal Authority and the Danish Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency, Sentinel data were used to assess land movements in Lemvig, documenting a subsidence up to 1 cm per year in Thyborøn.

The results

By using the soil deformation maps generated with Sentinel data, Lemvig Vand og Spildevand is able to precisely monitor soil subsidence in the area, in order to identify the pipes that need to be restored before they break up and with no need for regular site inspections. The company is now able to better manage its assets, and to position the pipes where they are expected to last longer.

They are so satisfied of the results obtained so far, that they are now working to launch a modelling pipe programme that would use Sentinel data to visualise the position of the pipes dynamically. This system would increase pipes’ lifetime of at least 10% and is expected to generate €500 000 of revenues per year.

The Danish Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency (SDFE) is currently working to identify other sectors of use of Sentinel data, both in the public and the private sectors.

Today, the utility sector believes that the underground is stationary – but actually it is moving. Satellite data allow us to monitor such movements, better place the pipes and extend their duration”, Lars Nørgård Holmegaard, CEO at Lemvig Vand og Spildevand.

Notruf Niederösterreich is a non-profit organisation founded in 2003 that dispatches all emergency medical service agencies and special rescue crews in the federal state of Lower Austria. Rescue units include the mountain rescue service, water rescue, cave rescue, and the local ambulances.

On a yearly basis, the response centre reacts to about 1000 emergency incidents in exposed alpine areas of their federal state. In the most active parts of the skiing season, however, this number may increase to more than 25 injured skiers per day.

The challenge

For any emergency response situation, it is vital for the response unit to arrive quickly at the location of the person in distress. To do so, knowing the exact location of the person calling the emergency number is of great help and is the first question the response centre will ask the person calling the emergency number. However, situations do occur where the person who calls is either lost or in an area that they can’t name. As every second may count, any help in obtaining a more exact location, more quickly, more reliably is of great help to the emergency response units.

The solution

Satellite navigation can help to inform the response centre, as well as the first responders and rescue helicopters, to respond more quickly to an emergency call. In Lower Austria, the rescue centre, Notruf Niederösterreich, decided to make use of the Advanced Mobile Location (AML) system which is already available on all Android mobile devices worldwide.

The AML is a location sharing system that enables the user of a smart-phone to automatically share their location when calling the emergency number. A phone where the AML is supported and activated by the user will notice when an emergency number is called. This allows the phone to automatically turn on all supported location systems and send their coordinates via SMS and also via HTTPS transmission to the emergency response centre.

The service can be fully integrated with Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP), meaning the person using it will not need to have a special mobile app already download or think about submitting their position. Instead, the emergency response centre will know the location of the caller as soon as they answer the phone call.

The system will be supported by the great majority of phones and can be relied on more fully by emergency response centres. For instance, recently On the 24 January 24 2018, Apple announced that the AML system would be implemented in their iOS 11.3 update.

The result

Since the implementation of the AML, the emergency response centre could report that they have experienced great results in the alpine areas they cover. The main benefits are reduced average response times to calls, greater reliability in identifying the caller’s location, as well as simplifying the overall rescue efforts. They have also experienced it to be fast and simple, as well as comparatively cheap to other alternatives.

The service has proved to be highly reliable in different outdoor conditions in Lower Austria, working most of the time and so far only failing from calls made sub-surface. Tests carried out elsewhere have also shown that by using the AML rather than relying on the information obtained from cellular towers of which area the person is calling from, precision can increase up to 4000 times over.

Since the AML system is well integrated with PSAPs, the response centre can more fully depend on it to work and thus improve their best response workflow accordingly. This solution is ideal for the citizens who do not need to download a specific application but can instead rely on the standard emergency number.

“In my opinion, AML is one of the greatest innovations that I have seen in my 27 years in Emergency services. Referencing alpine emergencies our Mountain rescue service and the HEMS crews have been surprised about the precision of the locations when we started integrating AML.”

René Kerschbaumer