Mobile communication infrastructure and information processing for emergency response

Emergency response operations are often impaired by lack of visibility, extreme temperatures or weather, remoteness of the operation site, and other conditions that increase the risk for emergency responders and compromise the success of the mission. This cluster is concerned with the application and development of information and communication technologies to alleviate the impact of the aforementioned challenges through enhanced communication and situational awareness capabilities.

To achieve the first of these objectives, the focus is on devising  artificial intelligence and optimization algorithms as well as hardware architectures that enable the utilization of autonomous mobile communication infrastructure, such as fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with on-board base stations. The latter can be swiftly deployed on-site, even before responders arrive, and can provide high-throughput data links to the control center, which can be used to exchange video feeds and sensing information.

The second objective comprises a set of artificial intelligence and signal processing techniques for collecting on-field sensor data, communicate it to the control center, and fuse the available heterogeneous sources of information to achieve seamless scene understanding with minimum human intervention. The aforementioned mobile infrastructure will also be leveraged to this end, both for data collection and communication purposes.