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 the cities of Cengio and Ferrania (Cairo Montenotte), Savona province in the Liguria region of Italy, on October 5th 2024. The aim of the exercise is to test the innovative technologies developed by the NIGHTINGALE project in controlled but realistic conditions. 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 integrating social media information to support strategic decision-making.
The NIGHTINGALE SFX2 was held in Italy, in the cities of Cengio and Ferrania (Cairo Montenotte), Savona province in the Liguria region of Italy, on October 5th 2024 and it involved the partners of the NIGHTINGALE Consortium and more than 300 practitioners representing the Italian Vigili di Fuoco, Carabinieri, Police, Medical Services, Medical School and Red Cross. Aside from the first responders, the exercise realistically engaged citizens, as bystanders to the incident, and volunteers, as citizens with experience and training capable of assisting the incident’s victims prior to the arrival of the first responders.
Citizens and volunteers were role-played by students of the Medical School and elements of the Active Citizens Network, one of the NIGHTINGALE partners.
With a duration of up to three hours, the second Full-Scale NIGHTINGALE exercise simulated a large explosion at the premises of the now dismantled 3M-Ferrania industrial site, with a cascading effect triggering different incidents.
While the large incident at Ferrania affected more than 70 victims, played by students of the Medical School, and determined the setting-up of a forward Command Centre on-site, the simulated Command Headquarters was setup at the Palazzo Rosso, in Cengio, located about 15 km away from the incident site. This Command Headquarters was equipped with a suite of NIGHTINGALE tools providing a full set of capabilities to ensure the full oversight and management of the Exercise as it evolved in the ground and deliver the required command and control to coordinate a successful cross-agency emergency response effort.
The SWAPP Citizen App, the Volunteer Portal and the ECHO System
To ensure the adequate execution and unfolding of the NIGHTINGALE SFX2, a suite of NIGHTINGALE tools was deployed to support the first responders, the citizens and volunteers, and the overall emergency response effort.
At the incident site in Ferrania, citizens and volunteers were given the SWAPP Citizen App, a mobile application that enables citizens to contact next generation 112 Services to report emergencies, that leverages IP-enabled multimedia communications among citizens, including the possibility to post relevant information in a social media platform, and that assists volunteers to formally report victims to the authorities.
At the Command Headquarters in Cengio, the Volunteer Portal developed by PARTICLE was managed by a Red Cross representative at the Strategic Room. The Volunteer Manager was responsible for accepting the task of mobilising volunteers to the incident site issued by the NIGHTINGALE Command, Control and Communication (C3) System at the Command and Control (C2) Room. Then, the Volunteer Manager could use the Volunteer Portal to identify the volunteers that were in the vicinity of the incident and had the right set of training, skills and competences to support the emergency response effort. The Volunteer Manager assigned the volunteers to the task and managed their communication and activities throughout the incident, including the reporting of victims. Filled by the trained volunteers, the geo-tagged victim reports were reviewed and validated by the Volunteer Manager, who forwarded them to the NIGHTINGALE C3 System for proper follow-up by the first responders on-site.
Also at the Command Headquarters in Cengio, the ECHO System developed by PARTICLE was managed by a representative of the Vigili di Fuoco at the C2 Room. The Social Media Information Officer was responsible for monitoring the citizens’ activity in the social media platform, identifying potentially significant post messages, verifying their content and relevance, validating their trustworthiness and forwarding them to the representatives of the Vigili di Fuoco, Police forces and Medical Services responsible for the incident’s management for prompt action.
The Start of the NIGHTINGALE SFX2
The NIGHTINGALE SFX2 multi-casualty incident was initiated with a citizen’s call to the NG112 Services using the 112 component of the SWAPP Citizen App. The call was placed at 11:19am local time in Ferrania and received at the NG PSAP System in the C2 Room of the Pallazo Rosso, reporting a large explosion in a building in the Ferrania industrial site and requesting that help be sent. This call triggered the registration and start of the Multi-Casualty Incident on the authorities’ side.
At the same time, the citizens’ activity in the private social media platform started. A private social media platform was setup by PARTICLE for the purpose of the NIGHTINGALE SFX2 so that the exercise participants’ posts would not disturb any public social media platform, causing the accounts to be blocked, and so that the interactions could be easily registered. The first social media post about the incident in Ferrania, Savona was registered at 11:20am local time in Ferrania, with a photo of the smoke coming out of a building in the Ferrania industrial site.
Results of the SWAPP Citizen App and the Volunteer Portal
The most relevant activity developed by the volunteers taking part to the NIGHTINGALE FSX2 in Savona was the reporting of victims, using the SWAPP Citizen App and sending the information to the Volunteer Portal. Then, the Volunteer Manager was able to validate the reports and forwarded them to the NIGHTINGALE C3 System for adequate action by dispatchers and first responders.
The Exercise provided an excellent opportunity to test the capabilities of the SWAPP Citizen App to store relevant information, such as the victim reports or photos taken by the volunteers, and send it through the mobile phone network. During the NIGHTINGALE FSX2, this capability was successfully tested and validated.
Overall, during the Savona NIGHTINGALE Exercise, the Volunteer Portal received a total of 64 victim reports, of which 49 were unique reports and 15 reports were deemed as re-submissions of the same victim report by the Volunteer Manager. It is noted that volunteers were not allowed entering areas considered as high risk, thus limiting their access to victims.
The Volunteer Portal includes the capability to provide chat and video rooms shared with the team of volunteers. Once the Volunteer Manager assigned volunteers to a task and after they accept the task, volunteers can use SWAPP to visualise tasks details and find other members. The next figure shows SWAPP tasking capabilities and their integration with PARTICLE.TALK.
During the exercise, PARTICLE demonstrated the ability to perform a video call initiated at the Command Headquarters to a volunteer located at the incident, using the capabilities provided by SWAPP and PARTICLE.TALK, as shown in the next figure.
Results of the Mastodon Social Media Platform and the ECHO System
As soon as NIGHTINGALE’s second full-scale exercise in Savona started, also the activity in the private Mastodon social media platform setup by PARTICLE began, with the first posts providing photos and videos of a building in smoke at the Ferrania site. Soon, these posts were followed by requests for help, indicating the presence of multiple victims through illustrative photos and videos. Additionally, several messages were posted depicting images and videos of the intervention of the first responders at the scene.
During the NIGHTINGALE FSX2, the ECHO System empowered the Social Media Information Officer at the C2 Room to monitor the citizens activity in the social media platform and early detect relevant messages associated with large incidents.
From the C2 Room, the Social Media Information Officer was able to witness the unfolding of the incident in Ferrania, following the sequence of citizens’ posts in the Mastodon social media platform. In addition, using the ECHO System, the Information Officer could identify potentially relevant messages, verify the user and review the message’s content. A dedicated filter on the Social Media Service developed by INOV based on specific hashtags (#savona, #fsx2) and keywords (such as victim, help, blood, danger, explosion, dead in both the English and Italian languages) supported the Officer using the ECHO System to rapidly identify relevant messages. If considered relevant, the Information Officer was responsible for validating the message and send it as an actionable intelligence piece to the right first responder service (police, firefighters or medical services) for prompt action through the NIGHTINGALE C2 System.
Overall, in the Mastodon Platform, more than 4000 posts were generated, coming from 21 different accounts that could provide potentially relevant information on incidents. From the start of the Exercise, at 11:20am local time, and for a total duration of two hours and forty-six minutes, 90 posts associated with the Ferrania incident were published by 24 active users, who shared 93 photos and 11 videos of the incident. 78 posts (87% of the total) included photos or videos, clearly highlighting how social media does provide relevant situational awareness to first responders, public safety, civil protection and government authorities, particularly when the emergency response effort is not yet deployed at the scene.
Concerning the ECHO System, and based on the work performed by the Social Media Information Officer, for the duration of almost two hours, 14 active users shared 45 photos and published a total of 39 Savona-related posts that were identified as relevant to be shared with the proper emergency response authorities.
SWAPP is a collaborative development from the following partners: PARTICLE Summary, CESTEL and INOV.
NIGHTINGALE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101021957.