TeamAware Project Showcases International Collaboration in Emergency Response Simulation in Bursa

Under the technical coordination of HAVELSAN, the final demonstrations of the TeamAware project, which has been ongoing for about three years with 24 partners from 13 countries, took place in Bursa between February 5-8, 2024.

The TeamAware project, part of the Horizon 2020 funding program aimed at harmonizing science and technology policies and practices across Europe, enhancing the continent's technology capacity, and establishing university-industry collaborations, has been supported by the European Union (EU) since May 2021 towards "secure societies."

HAVELSAN's TeamAware proposal, among 90 projects, achieved a perfect score, bringing Türkiye its first-ever first place in the Horizon 2020 Security category, marking a significant achievement. The project includes various companies, research institutes, and universities from Türkiye, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, and Greece, with HAVELSAN Modeling and Sensor Technologies Team Leader Çağlar Akman serving as the technical coordinator.

The project incorporates wearable systems, unmanned autonomous vehicles equipped with electro-optical cameras, acoustic detectors, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) sensors to identify potential threats around operation teams. Developed artificial intelligence algorithms that automatically detect fires, smoke, explosions, CBRN, building damage, and other threats and environmental risks, informing relevant team members. A special mobile application developed within TeamAware also enables citizens to directly reach emergency response teams, thus easily informing them about the operation's status, dangers, and threats.

The project's final demonstrations, hosted by the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality before its planned completion in May 2024, have successfully taken place in Bursa.

In the final demonstrations on February 7-8, comprehensive exercises involving project teams, evaluators, municipal workers, emergency response teams, and health personnel were completed over approximately 17 hours, showcasing three different emergency scenarios sequentially.

Led by the HAVELSAN team and involving over 80 foreign experts from 13 countries, along with 20 research institutions, the National Medical Rescue Team (UMKE), the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality Fire Department and Smart Urbanism Department Presidencies, and the Burulaş teams participated in exercises with more than 200 personnel for post-earthquake building damage assessment, chemical area, fire, and train accident simulations.

The TeamAware project includes a system capable of remotely tracking emergency response teams, determining their locations indoors, detecting their activities with wearable sensors and artificial intelligence, and incorporating wearable chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) sensors, acoustic sensors, and drones, is under the technical coordination and leadership of HAVELSAN, in collaboration with the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality and teams from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Greece, and Romania.

The first demo of the final demonstrations took place at the Bursa Water and Sewerage Administration (BUSKI) General Directorate during the afternoon of February 7. This demo showcased systems for assessing whether a hospital building could continue operations after a hypothetical earthquake in Bursa, for citizens to report their status during disasters and receive information, and for detecting earthquake posts on social media, all successfully completed. The BUSKI General Directorate Building was used as the hospital building, and images transmitted by drone sensors were rapidly assessed by a team of civil engineers for building damage assessment.

In the second demo at the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality Fire Department Küçükbalıklı Group Command, following a chemical storage explosion caused by an earthquake, systems for citizens to report their status during disasters and receive information, for detecting earthquake and explosion posts on social media, for acoustic-chemical-visual event detection, and for observing the location and condition of emergency teams were successfully demonstrated.

In the third demo, which started at midnight, a scenario involved a metro train derailing between Nilüfer Station and Odunluk Station due to an earthquake, causing severe injuries to some passengers. The responding teams, equipped with the latest technological gear and wearable technologies, initially used drones for site and casualty assessments.