PARTICLE SUMMARY (PARTICLE) participated in the full-scale exercise simulating multi-casualty incidents (MCI) conducted under the aegis of the EU-funded NIGHTINGALE project, in Villejust (France) on Sunday 9 June 2024. The aim of the exercise is to test the innovative technologies developed by the NIGHTINGALE project in controlled but realistic conditions, simulating multiple attacks by a terrorist group. The technologies are designed to enhance pre-hospital life support and triage by improving the capacity of first responders to respond effectively to mass casualty incidents.
In this exercise, PARTICLE presented a set of tools to support MCI operations, including the SWAPP – Citizen App, the Volunteer Management system and Situational Awareness Tools to support strategic decision-making.
Integrating features developed by PARTICLE, CESTEL and INOV, SWAPP was employed successfully to engage the assistance of citizens near the incident. Citizens called in the emergency to the 112 NG-PSAP and, acting as true first sensors on site, exchanged rich data about the incident, including multimedia files, that allowed first responders to develop a first awareness of the situation on site.
Furthermore, those citizens that were registered as volunteers, exhibiting skill sets indicating they could offer on-site assistance before the arrival of the first responders, were able to use SWAPP to report victims, sharing details of their injuries and their location and supporting pre-hospital life support and victims assistance in the field.
The ECHO situational awareness system collected relevant incident-related information in the social media platform and displayed it in live dashboards, enabling a very good insight of the regional and national incident information to support decision-making.
Members of the French emergency medical services and representatives of civil protection agencies and first responders in Europe were involved in the exercise, using the NIGHTINGALE tools and providing valuable feedback on how these technologies can enhance pre-hospital triage during mass casualty incidents and strengthen the collaboration among emergency response agencies in the field.
NIGHTINGALE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101021957
