The integrated IMPRESS system will be tested in the context of the EADRCC Consequence Management Exercise “CRNA GORA 2016”, which will be conducted on 31 October to 4 November 2016 in Montenegro, involving the participation of many stakeholders from many countries. The participation of the IMPRESS project (http://fp7-impress.eu) in this exercise is the result of the cooperation between partner IICT-BAS of the IMPRESS project and the NATO Center of Excellence in Sofia (Crisis Management and Disaster Response (CMDR COE), www.cmdrcoe.mod.bg/), thus offering IMPRESS another opportunity to test its solution under realistic health emergency conditions.
The scenario of the field exercise is based on a floods and chemical incident response and foresees the deployment of emergency teams in eight main sites surrounding Podgorica, the capital of the country. Approximately 14.000 people is considered to be affected by the floods. A large number of victims, anticipated in the scenario, spread in the various sites, will be rescued, triaged and transported to the local hospital. IMPRESS will play the role of the DSS system that may improve the relative preparedness and response of the Health Services.
INCIMOB, the IMPRESS mobile application for medical first responders, along with medical devices interfaced with INCIMOB, will be used by CMDR COE users on the field and field tested during the “CRNA GORA 2016” exercise. For this purpose, the CMDR COE users will be trained on 31/10 and 1/11 in the context of a relative table top exercise while a number of 10 INCIMOB devices will be deployed in the main sites of the exercise. Information of victims recorded by INCIMOBs will be sent over Internet to the IMPRESS Command and Control System (INCIMAG component along with the backend data management, storage and DSS components) operating at the Ministry of Health/Health Crisis Dept. premises in Athens, Greece – the latter will play the role of the Emergency Operations Center. The INCIMAG module will receive and visualize victims’ data and other information sent from INCIMOB clients, and will feed the IMPRESS data management and DSS modules in order to effectively respond to the emergency, based on simulated data of hospitals and traffic conditions.
The IMPRESS results out of the Montenegro exercise will be presented in the context of a specific session of a follow-up conference that will be organized by CMDR COE in Sofia, Bulgaria in January 2017.