Bari 26 February 2014 13:30
Sistemi Software Integrati S.p.A. (SSI), a subsidiary of Selex ES, a Finmeccanica company, will attend the International Conference "Space4You - Space, a driver for Competitiveness and Growth" in Bari, Southern Italy between 27th and 28th February 2014. The Conference has been promoted by the Apulia Region and NEREUS (the Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies), in collaboration with the Apulian Aerospace District.
The conference will highlight the fundamental role of space as a driver for competitiveness and growth and will bring together representatives from European regions, the European Commission, space agencies, industries, regional and national institutions, academia, space associations, research institutions and universities.
During the session titled ‘Emergencies and Disasters’ SSI will present its "Cooperative multi-agent systems for integrated applications” solution with a particular focus on the SMART project; Space for Smart Resource Management for Disaster Early Warning. SMART aims to provide decision makers with early warning in the case of a disaster or critical event related to landslides, helping to improve emergency response. Having generated interest among Italy’s Civil Protection organisations at national and regional levels, SMART has the advantage of bolstering, rather than interfering with, existing procedures for collecting and managing landslide data.
The management of natural disasters and critical events requires the coordinated planning of a number of resources and procedures, event forecasting, resource and site monitoring, managing complexity and integrating advanced tools. The swarm intelligence model, studied and adopted by SSI with co-funding from the Apulia Region, is well suited to handle the complexity of such a scenario based on properties such as "multitude" and “autonomous behaviors”.
The SMART solution integrates satellite data (telecommunications, earth observation and satellite navigation) and information from local ‘cooperative agents’, (various specialised entities such as people, sensors, software agents and smart devices) which can self-organise and cooperate, adapting to environmental changes.
Essentially, SMART will bring together a large amount of data from a number of different sources, making it both accessible and usable to improve the cooperation of emergency responders such as Civil Protection, the Police and the Fire Department.