Project Overview
DESCARTES is an R&D project funded by the SYSTEM@TIC PARIS-REGION competitiveness cluster which aims at designing and implementing an innovative system to support crisis managers before, during and after a crisis. In fact, DESCARTES aims at supporting crisis managers who have to synthesize lot of information coming from different sources and report back, take decisions in an emergency context, and give appropriate orders to numerous actors when a crisis occurs. The key for an efficient arbitration is the combination of several elements: huge knowledge of procedures, remembrance of precedent similar events and decision-taking in a damaged context.
The key project figures are:
- Duration: 36 months, started on October 2008
- Consortium: 6 industrial partners (Thales TS, MASA Group, Thales TRT, Thales TSS, Geo212, Geoconcept) and 2 academic partners (CEA LIST, CEA DAM)
- Strategic objective: Global security / Emergency Management
MASA Group is responsible of:
- Simulation of emergency actors and population involved during disruptive scenarios with a specific focus on population modeling and simulation. This simulation should be able to handle emergency procedures and crisis plan implementation.
- Modeling and simulation of crowd behaviors during evacuation at a local level (train or metro station) interacting with emergency services.
Challenges
DESCARTES is directly correlated with two other projects under development called SIC and MOBISIC to deliver a fully integrated platform for crisis management from national to operational level. SIC goal is to secure permanently critical infrastructures such as airports or nuclear plants to limit consequences of frequent and minor events. MOBISIC goal is to secure occasionally these critical infrastructures when a rare and serious event, such as a terrorist attack, occurs.
DESCARTES system combines complementary tools to handle crisis preparedness, management and mitigation:
- Analysis tool: Get back and synthesize information from RETEX, procedures, terrain etc.
- Prediction tool: Launch macroscopic and microscopic simulations integrating realistic behaviors, such as crowd movements or action mode of civilian security actors.
- Decision support tool: Merge terrain data (timetable of teams, available reinforcements, lack of resources, etc.) and offer a multi-scale and real-time visualization of the situation.
- Training tool: Offer virtual and/or constructive simulations in which you can test different strategies and decisions.
In order to demonstrate the system’s capacities, three representative scenarios were selected: an earthquake on the French West Indies, a multiple terrorist attack in Paris metro and a storm in the Paris region. MASA Group simulation will be able to handle every scenario, both at entity level for local area and aggregated level for large scale area.