I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

7.2.1.2 Communications
A key aspect to consider when dealing with the security of the citizens is the likely intervention of diff erent kinds of fi rst
responders. Depending on the scale of the events, coordination among these actors is required at a command and at
an operational level. These actors will have diff erent communications systems, ranging from radio, terrestrial networks to
satellites that are not interoperable by default. Some fi rst responders may even rely on communications service providers (i.e.
telecommunications and mobile infrastructure companies) whose infrastructures normally collapse due to the huge increase
of demand by population when a disaster occurs (terrorist attack, natural disaster…). In order to optimise the operations
complete situation awareness is needed, so data fl ow from diff erent organisations and/or sensors must be supported by
reliable communications.
Some of the challenges to be considered are interoperable communication and message exchange at all levels. Table 2
addresses some of the identifi ed challenges in the area of communications.
Table 2: Risks and challenges for communications
7.2.1.3 Information Integration Management
The quality of decisions in security operations heavily depends on the decision-makers’ knowledge of how critical situations
unfold, i.e., their situation awareness. Research on how to enhance situation awareness is thus of vital importance for the
security of European citizens. One of the critical elements of situation awareness is to comprehend the meaning of a situation
and to make projections of its future development. By improving these abilities through technological and methodological
innovations, decision-makers will be able to more rapidly identify and respond to hazardous events. This includes technology
to integrate and interpret vast amounts of information from heterogeneous sensors and information sources. In this area as
well as in the surveillance area there is a need for research on how to construct systems that balance the security needs with
the privacy and integrity rights of citizens.
Due to the large variety of potential situations and the open ended problems encountered, this technology cannot be fully automated.
Thus mixed initiative interaction between humans and technical systems must be supported and also the ability to collaborate
regarding the assessment of situations among operators and analysts that may be separated by geographical, organisational and
cultural boundaries. Semantic interoperability of designed information management systems is thus a key challenge.
For this purpose the key issue in distributed systems in dynamic environments is getting the right information at the right
time and at the right place, including addressing privacy and security issues. An evolutionary path towards this ideal is
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