Description and Benefits of VALKYRIES

The emergency medical system has a unique role when deployed as first aid response on disaster situations, where Multi-Casualty Incidents (MCI) tend to reveal resource insufficiency (rescue personnel, healthcare providers, facilities, etc.), significant breakdowns in the local health care facilities usually damaged or destroyed, malfunctioning communication infrastructure and the jeopardized ability to deliver additional resources. In order to address these situations and related ones, the different EU emergency teams have been quick to adopt the latest technological advances, such as digitalization, new generation communication networks, drones, etc., which have led to new opportunities for procedural and collaborative improvements.
However, given the rapid proliferation of new related opportunities, their implementation often significantly precedes their standardization, leading to different intersecting practices. This reduced cross-border collaboration opportunities and difficult to define, schedule and enforce joint lines of industrial and research development able to bring common disruptive solutions to the EU response teams.

The challenge of this project is to analyse these gaps for then designing key pre-standardization and harmonization actions to be implemented in a reference integration platform and demonstrated in four different cross-border and cross-sectorial scenarios.

The consortium is coordinated by Indra and brings together 17 partners from 8 EU countries.

H2020 VALKYRIES Project

Title: Harmonization and Pre-Standardization of Equipment, Training and Tactical Coordinated procedures for First Aid Vehicles deployment on European multi-victim Disasters

Type of action: Innovation Action
Topic: SU-DRS03-2018-2019-2020 Grant number: 101020676
Total Cost: € 6 895 326,25
EC Contribution: € 5 995 757,50
Start Date: 01/10/2021
End Date: 30/09/2023
Duration: 24 months
Project Web Site: https://www.valkyries-h2020.eu/
Key Words: Emergencies, Multi-victim disasters, Cross-border, Cross-sectorial, Reference Integration, Harmonization
Coordinator: Indra Sistemas SA

What will be the core contribution of the VALKYRIES project?

VALKYRIES is exploring novel harmonization procedures focused on emphasizing the cross-sectorial, cross-hierarchical, cross-board, legal, ethical, and political implications of standardization and pre-standardization related decisions made. Based on this, VALKYRIES will address the development of a reference model for rationale harmonization of first aid EMS technologies, procedures, and collaboration opportunities.
This reference model will be instantiated as a novel harmonization framework where rational-comprehensive decision-making, divergent and future thinking will support the anticipation and reaction against the uncertainty inherent in the broad ecosystem of emerging opportunities. After an in depth analysis of potential technical, procedural and collaborative related harmonization needs, the harmonization framework will be applied in some of them; consequently being demonstrated in the grounds of a Reference Integration (SIGRUN).

How the project will be developed?

During an early stage, the consortium worked on the development of a joint vision of the VALKYRIES concept, which combines the perspective and need of the different entities involved. This vision resulted in the requirements, roadmap and target architecture able to sustain the rest of the project activities. On these grounds, the Consortium is exploring the related ethical, regulation, certification and standardization context deriving to the definition of joint harmonization framework able to prompt the end-user adoption of disruptive enablers.
Then the Consortium started to survey, analyse, understand the end-user needs and enabling potential for Technologies and Equipment for first aid responders (KARA), Procedures and Operation for first aid responders (HERJA), and Collaboration and Training for first aid responders (EIR). This will proceed the harmonization framework application in some of them resulting in a Reference Integration (SIGRUN), and its consolidation via verification and demonstration.

What kind of harmonization opportunities will be surveyed?

Ethical, regulation, certification and standardization opportunities from three perspectives, referred to as KARA, HERJA and EIR in honour of famous Valkyries.

KARA: Technologies and Equipment for first aid responders¹

Focalized into the promising disruptive capabilities related with digitalization/virtualization technologies (incl. AI-based enablers) applicable to first aid actuations, among them:

1) the utilization of all available equipment at disaster situations for successful actuation, with particular emphasis the health support wearable devices to monitor and analyze both patients and emergency response staff;

2) enable the establishment of trusted communications for sharing operational information in a multi-domain environment of stakeholders;

3) the setting up of a mobile C2 to put in place both operational decision-making and action planning in a coordinated way; and

4) to allow the deployment of connected and autonomous driving enablers to support the disaster response actuation

HERJA: Procedures and Operation for first aid responders ²

Aiming on produce guidelines and harmonization recommendations for practices and operational procedures for facilitating, guiding, and enhancing the cooperation between actors in the first aid response to mass casualty incidents and disasters.
HERJA will facilitate the understanding of the complex map of practices and operative procedures in aid response to mass casualty incidents and disasters, by surveying, studying, and analyzing the common practices, reconnaissance, triage and care of victims, crisis response planning, maintenance, logistics, C2 operations, development of a Common Operational Picture and alerting/warning.
During WP5, partners will work at assembling draft standards or suggesting modifications of the existing ones for solving the gaps and harmonization issues found, and lessons learned.

EIR: Collaboration and Training for first aid responders ³

EIR will aim on facilitating, guiding, and enhancing the cooperation between vehicular first aid responders with other disaster management actors (firefighters, law enforcement agencies, civilian protection authorities, military, heterogeneous voluntary organizations, etc.). The following working streams will be conducted during its execution: Resource Federation and trusted information sharing, Education and Training for first aid responses, Raising practitioner and social awareness, Civil-Military Cooperation, Civil Protection cooperation and Aid Volunteerism

REFERENCES

¹Peter Nicolai Arbo, (1831–1892) Valkyrie, c. 1864. Oil on canvas. 263 × 203 cm (103.5 × 79.9 in). Nationalmuseum, national gallery of Sweden
²Howard David Johnson (born 2 September 1954). Valkyrie Maiden. 16 x 20 inches [40.64 x 50.80 cm]
³Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831–1892). Asgardsreien, c. 1872. Oil on canvas. Height: 165.5 cm (65.2 in). Width: 240.5 cm (94.7 in). National Gallery, Norway

VALKYRIES Kick off meeting

On October 4-5 ^th 2021, the VALKYRIES project officially began with a two-days meeting in which the partners of the consortium attended semi-face-to-face. This was the starting signal for a major initiative that aims to add the greatest value to European civil security.

FEINDEF 2021

On November 5th 2021, the Project coordinator, Juan-Román Martínez Arranz, will present the VALKYRIES project at the round table “Horizon Europe and civil security for society” that will take place at the International Defense Fair (FEINDEF) in Spain.

First VALKYRIES plenary meeting

The first plenary meeting of the project took place on January in a 100% virtual format due to the COVID-19 situation. The event was attended by all the members of the consortium. At the event, the consortium discussed the progress of the different tasks and the expected scope of each of them. At the same time, the first outputs of the analyses carried out on the European panorama of emergency responses were presented.

Coffee Chat with U.S. Embassy

The VALKYRIES project was invited to be part of a round table addressed to U.S. organizations on March, the presentation was carried out by Juan-Román Martínez Arranz as Coordinator of the project together with the Spanish delegate and national expert - Maite Boyero Egido - and the Chief Inspector of the Spanish National Police - José Francisco López. The event was hosted by Angel Turrin and Cameron Werker, representatives of the U.S. Commercial Service. This event helped to give visibility to the project beyond the European Union and raise great interest.

1 ^st Project Workshops

The 1^st VALKYRIES, Demonstration and Standardization workshops were held on 30-31th of March in a full virtual format. The events were carried out by Indra and Novotec and were attended by several members of the EAB who provided their views on the status of the project and the work methodology used. The progress made in the first 6 months of the project was presented in terms of the project requirements gathered, definition of the demonstration scenarios and strategy used in the standardization tasks. The next steps defined for the coming months were shared.