Protecting Humanitarian Workers: Large simulation exercise at TPM for the EU project “iTrack”

In the week of April 16, all 13 international partners of the EU H2020 iTRACK project gathered at the TPM faculty for a full week of technology integration and testing of the ambitious iTrack system, an advanced system for real-time tracking and monitoring to support humanitarian operations in the dire conditions of conflict disasters.

Milestone
The integration and simulation week at TPM was a milestone in the development of the iTRACK project:  the technology development work of the past 18 months conducted by the different partners was to be integrated and tested for the first time. The different components range from social media analysis, threat detection, alerting and messaging, real-time routing and decision support. The team could follow all of this live via camera feeds from various locations on the campus and in the air via drones. Under the enthusiastic guidance of prof. Alexander Verbraeck, the technology partners worked throughout the week to fine-tune their components. Immediate feedback on their work was gathered from testing the technologies through elaborate simulation scenarios that were developed by TPM researchers Yan Wang and Heide Lukosch and put to the test at the Teaching Lab and the Green Village.

High level workshops
Later in the same week, two high-level workshops were organized by Tina Comes and Bartel Van de Walle with participants from UN agencies and the EU project officer to show and discuss the current status of the project and collect feedback for further use in the humanitarian field. The project partners look back on a successful exercise, that greatly contributes to the fine-tuning of the system.