The project eNOTICE-2, led by Assoc. Prof. Elif Sürer from the Multimedia Informatics program at the METU Graduate School of Informatics, began in January 2024. The project aims to establish an EU Network of Training Centers for preparedness to Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear (CBRN) Events, with a total of seven partner organizations from four different European countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey. Expected to last two years, the project involves collaboration between the METU team and the SAFE Foundation from Italy, a project partner specializing in the development of virtual reality and extended reality technologies. The SAFE Foundation, an international NGO engaged in managing high-impact projects in the fields of security, defense, fundamental rights, monitoring and evaluation, includes top-level national and international experts with diverse academic and professional backgrounds.
The project eNOTICE-2 will be advance on the identified needs and findings of the eNOTICE Network of Practitioners to increase overall preparedness against delibarete, accidental, or naturally occurring CBRN events. The project focuses on improving preparedness and increasing capability to rapidly respond to large-scale cross-border crises involving chemical, biological, or radiological-nuclear agents, or a mixture of them. Therefore, it endeavors to connect various CBRN practitioner stakeholders, such as first responders, crisis managers, civil protection, training professionals, CBRN technology developers, policymakers and civilian volunteers.
Among the primary outcomes expected to be achieved through this project are new training modules with up-to-date CBRN teaching courses; a continuously updated open-access digital library of CBRN resources containing CBRN documents on best practices, procedures, glossaries, guidelines and policies with a focus on CBRN decontamination; development and methodology of synthetic operational data (security data sheets); scenarios and virtual reality/extended reality demos focusing on harmonized procedures for decontamination; an EU-wide guide for CBRN decontamination with special emphasis on decontamination of assistive devices for disabled people.
The project eNOTICE-2 will bring together various stakeholders from different disciplines during four simulation exercises to promote collaboration, coordination, compatibility and complementarity among the actors, while endeavoring to enhance knowledge-sharing partnerships between civil protection and DRM actors, and ensure cross-fertilization with the R&D sector.
Dr. Elif Sürer, as the coordinator of the team at METU as a consortium partner, is to lead another project, eNOVATION, which is expected to start in September 2024 and last for three years. Supported as part of Horizon Europe’s call for a network of internationally coordinated training centers for the verification and testing of CBRN tools and technologies considering human factors in emergency situations, the project includes a total of 22 institutions from different countries. The project eNOVATION aims to enhance training processes for first responders in the detection, management, and identification of chemical and biological threats, including toxin incidents, as well as the evaluation of field-deployed tools and technologies for monitoring and decontamination. Focusing on training programs for first and second response teams, the project seeks to provide user-friendly technology and tools that allow teams to develop their on-site global risk assessments.
Another objective of eNOVATION is to expand the network of training centers previously created as part of eNOTICE by benefiting from the significant contributions of CBRN Center of Excellence regional offices. Important elements of eNOVATION’s initiative involve granting access to enhanced capacity labeled training centers, employing advanced training techniques utilizing technologies such as virtual reality, user-friendly on-site tools and technologies for security practitioners, updated policies and crisis management tailored to newly emerging threats, and increased access to the CBRN marketplace. Additionally, as part of the project eNOVATION, Argedor Information Technologies Inc., operating within ODTÜ Teknokent, will collaborate with METU in the technology development and technology infrastructure provision work packages of the project.
