What would you do during a flood? Testing I-REACT in Venice

Alessio Bosca & Andrea Bolioli from H-FARM Consultancy

When you think of Venice, your mind goes to the beautiful lagoon: romantic canals, old bridges, colorful buildings, small cafés, excursions on a gondola, and a lot (a lot!) of tourists. If you’re going to Venice, you will probably experience acqua alta, a tide peak that periodically occurs in the lagoon area, causing the partial flooding of Venice and its surroundings.

What if, on these occasions, technology can help first responders and citizens by offering a platform, wearables, and an app to connect with authorities and control rooms? This idea has become a reality thanks to I-REACT, an international research project funded by the European Union H2020 program. On May 9-10, 2019 we took part in a meeting in Venice at the premises of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe. Together with the first responders, the Civil Protection, many volunteers, emergency managers, researchers, and the citizens of Venice, we experienced in-field simulations to see how the technologies worked and how they could be improved.

We experienced the overflowing of a canal in the countryside: here, volunteers and emergency managers arrived on time thanks to the notifications on the I-REACT app and were able to drain water from a torrent to another. In Venice, we lived the reproduction of a (fake) fire: drones took pictures of the area and reported to control rooms in real-time. In another corner of the city, an injured man collapsed: here, a citizen took a picture of him and shared it on the I-REACT platform, activating the rescue chain.

I-REACT’s main aim is to find and develop solutions for disaster management. With other 20 European partners, we have worked together to develop different tools:

• The I-REACT Big Data Platform, with accurate weather forecasts, historical data, satellite and risk maps, reports, social media information, and more;
• Wearable devices for the first responders to exchange messages, pictures, and alarms;
• Smart glasses, offering video-feed from other locations to the user who is wearing them;
• I-REACT app, available on Android and iOS, to receive alerts on natural hazards, share information and pictures of emergency situations.

Our main contribution to the project consists in Social Media Analysis: the use of its proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies allows for real-time tracking and understanding of big data streams from social media.

Overall, social media analysis provides fast and relevant information during emergencies, highlighting the fact that these communication channels are not only changing the way we live and interact with each other but also making every citizen an essential part of the fight against disasters.

Thanks to I-REACT, we are a part of a new way to manage extreme weather.

To know more about the project and its impact, take a look at this article on maize, our magazine that explores the impact of technology on business, education, and society.