EXUS AI Labs, the R&D department of the INGENIOUS partner, EXUS, focuses on designing and developing robust and trustworthy AI solutions that allow us to leverage the untapped potential of big data analytics across multiple verticals. We impact the technological future by developing techniques to capture, process, analyse and visualise large datasets in timeframes not accessible to standard IT technologies.

Within INGENIOUS, EXUS AI Labs is contributing by developing and prototyping a multi-source Information Fusion Engine (FE). The Fusion Engine will allow the integration of multiple sources of data and to utilize the data gathered for real-time situational awareness and decision support functionalities to crisis operators.  

First, this is made possible through a range of standard data-related functionalities provided by the FE: Data ingestion, validation, transformation, storage and dissemination to other components.

Beyond standard data processing, another group of FE functionalities aims to provide situational awareness and decision support based on pattern detection. By statistical analysis of the observations from various data sources, FE permits the extraction of information about environmental and First Responder (FR) behavior aspects and the early detection of unusual occurrences or trends. In addition, machine and deep learning models are introduced to improve the performance of the system by implementing more accurate and efficient alert generation.

The intelligence embedded in this component will be used for the following three functionalities:

  • the use of data of the sensors for rating the danger level of the worksite in zones, and providing early warnings and alerts to FRs.
  • the tracing of the FRs’ actions, in order to provide guidance for their next steps.
  • the monitoring of health status and prediction of health risks of FRs. The FE performs an analysis based on data from FRs’ vitals sensors (heart rate, oxygen levels, temperature) and provides prediction on their health risk to be used as a decision support tool.

This set of functionalities was a product of extensive discussions with the end users in order to ensure that the provided intelligence will fill a gap in the current FR operational procedures and add substantial decision support and situational awareness capabilities.

Based on this intelligent data fusion, EXUS AI Labs is developing the worksite application (WOA), a mobile application (screenshot shown in Fig.1 and 2) that aims to assist with the on-field resource and casualty management of the mission, as well as facilitate meaningful decision support. More specifically, resource management refers to the status of FRs and the allocated equipment. Casualty management refers to the identification and monitoring process of victims, giving useful insight into their status and overview. Regarding decision support, the goal of the application is to provide actionable information concerning on-site conditions, terrain, population density, and relevant infrastructure.

Figure 1. Map screen of the worksite app showing a live overview of the mission, such as deployed personnel and located victims, overlaid over a field map

The focus of EXUS AI Labs for the first year of the project was largely on designing and preparing the individual tools. We are working towards finalizing the first prototype version, and more exciting news is yet to come!

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