Find out what Multi-Stakeholders Situational Awareness Systems (MSSAS) are with Prof. Friedrich Steinhäusler from the International Security Competence Centre and SAYSO Technical Director. 

What are Multi-Stakeholders Situational Awareness Systems?

MSSAS are Situational Awareness systems that can be shared between organisations, for example between firefighters and paramedics, or between entities from different countries. SAYSO's main objective is to put in place the preparatory work for the development of innovative Situational Awareness Systems that will improve the coordination of civil protection operations where multiple organisations are involved, especially in the case of international cooperation.

What is the current situation concerning Situational Awareness (SA) in Crisis Management?

Prof. Friedrich Steinhäusler: Although there are well-defined roles and procedures for creating common operational pictures (COP), there is a perceived lack of interoperability with tools and services for a more efficient sharing of Situational Awareness (SA) information.

Interoperability between multi-stakeholders is acknowledged as a key objective and thus the need for a well-defined environment for cross-organisational information exchange is generally recognized. However, this aspect is missing in many technical solutions.

At present, modern State-of-the-Art (SOTA) SA-related tools are used only infrequently, if at all, by many EU crisis managers. Thus, SA can lack essential information for optimal decision making.

What is SAYSO's MSSAS approach :

Prof. Friedrich Steinhäusler: The MSSAS concept is based on Reference Architecture, Functionalities and Tools, as detailed in three SAYSO reports publicly available:

• a State-of-the-Art analysis of existing Situational Awareness systems and tools available on the market,
• a gap analysis between the State-of-the-art and the requirements of civil protection practitioners,
• a review of the input and output data formats used by EU crisis response organisations.

It also takes into account results of TRL-analysis of EU funded FP7- and H2020 projects.

The MSSAS Structure consists of a common base and special modules for the different stakeholders involved in crisis management, such as law enforcement, fire fighters, paramedic and technical relief organisations.

The MSSAS Base incorporates the results of: (a) analysis of end user-requirements, (b) SOTA Situational Awareness tools, (c) analysis of TRL of EU project results, (d) EU Community Crisis Management Library (CCM), and (e) ethical/legal issues as addressed in GDPR.

Finally, MSSAS Modules contain only tools needed specifically by a certain type of first responders involved in crisis management.