Real-time Aerial Imagery for Crisis Management: Lessons Learned from an European Civil Protection Exercise

Abstract

Regular international civil protection exercises are an important part of the European Civil Protection Mechanism. One such exercise, called IRONORE2019, took place in September 2019 in Eisenerz, Austria, with the aim of training international cooperation of relief teams in case of an earthquake. In parallel to this exercise, the European project DRIVER+ conduced a Trail in order to test novel solutions for civil protection. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) provided aerial imagery as well as derived map products to the project and the exercise, which were also made available to the Bavarian Red Cross, among others, as exercise participants. In this way, products developed using the latest scientific methods could be used and tested in practice. The valuable experiences from this operational use, which are explained in this article, serve the enhancement of the processes and products and will be implemented in the future in order to further support disaster management.