European Space Agency
European Space Agency
Critical issues affecting the development of the system have been identified to be the following:
Some of the benefits of the ECM-GR system:
The overall architecture of the ECM-GR system consists of three main components: i) Operational Centre Terminal (OCT), ii) Incident Site Mobile Terminal (ISMT), and iii) Hand Held User Terminals (HUTs). The Operational Centre Terminal (OCT) is located at the command headquarters and is indented to provide the means for fast situation assessment and disaster management, as well as coordination of rescue teams, by providing the following:
The Incident Site Mobile Terminal (ISMT) is located at the site of seismic incident and is focused on the provision of communication services between the incident site and the OCT. The ISMT establishes communication with the OCT via a satellite link and transmits required data for the services provided from the OCT. In addition, the ISMT establishes TCP/IP communication with the rescue team members holding their HUTs via a WiFi network.
The Hand Held User Terminals (HUTs) are held by the rescue team members at the incident site. They enable the rescue team members to communicate with the ISMT over the WiFi network established by the ISMT, and transmit voice data, digital pictures and video, as well as GPS positioning data and identification data. As HUT can be consifered any pne of the following types of devices:
The overall architecture of the system is shown in the following figure.
The Project was divided into two phases. In the first phase, the following activities took place:
The above phases completed until the BDR. After the successful completion of BDR the second phase of the project was initiated. During the Second phase, the planned activites were:
The ECM-GR project was stopped after MTR after mutual considerations about motivations and market requirements, after the long delays suffered. The completed tasks led to a prototype definition and partial integration of the ECM-GR system. The activities that were not performed according the initial planning were the complete integration and final trials. This fact affected the project in the mean of the final presentation of its uses and capabilities. A Final report describing the major results of the project and the lesson learnt was released.
Although the intended ECM-GR system was not integrated, this project has pushed the company to make available for the market the ECM-PLUS product. The ECM-PLUS is based on a subset of the ECM-GR project and has already been installed partially (components of ECM-GR) and operates successfully in Greek Prefectures. Moreover, based on ECM-GR, Aratos Technologies S.A. developed a new system, called ECM-Basic. It can be considered as a lightweight version of the ECM-GR system to provide vehicle positioning under extreme and difficult conditions such as heavy snowy mountains.
