The First Responder (FR) of the Future: a Next Generation Integrated Toolkit (NGIT) for Collaborative Response, increasing protection and augmenting operational capacity

Today’s First Responders (FR) are using technology of the past. During their primary mission of saving lives and preserving society’s safety and security, FRs face a multitude of challenges. In both small scale emergencies and large scale disasters, they often deal with life-threatening situations, hazardous environments, uncharted surroundings and limited awareness. Threats and hazards evolve rapidly, crossing municipalities, regions and nations with speed and ease. Armouring public safety services with all the tools that modern technology has to offer is critical. Such tools holistically enhance their protection and augment their operational capacities, assisting them in saving lives as well as ensuring their safe return from the disaster scene. INGENIOUS will develop, integrate, test, deploy and validate a Next Generation Integrated Toolkit (NGIT) for Collaborative Response, which ensures high level of Protection & Augmented Operational Capacity to respond to the disaster scene. This will comprise a multitude of the tools and services required: 1) for enabling protection of the FRs with respect to their health, safety and security; 2) for enhancing their operational capacities by offering them with means to conduct various response tasks and missions boosted with autonomy, automation, precise positioning, optimal utilisation of available resources and upgraded awareness and sense-making; 3) for allowing shared response across FR teams and disciplines by augmenting their field of view, information sharing and communications between teams and with victims. The NGIT armours the FRs at all fronts. The NGIT will be provided at the service of the FRs for extensive testing and validation in the framework of a rich Training, Testing and Validation Programme – of Lab Tests (LSTs), Small-Scale Field Tests (SSTs) and Full-Scale Field Validations (FSXs) – towards powering the FR of the future being fully aware, fully connected and fully integrated.