S&R Exploitation and Innovation MGT planning

In the past years, there has been tremendous progress in the field of Search and Rescue area of activity; several successful projects have proven the benefits of autonomous vehicles, robots, smart clothing, DSS, Augmented Reality in assisting the efforts of first responders to natural or manmade disasters. However, the large variety of cooperative applications have been designed for different goals, stakeholders or specific settings / environments and have been developed on a silo-based approach and deployed independently from each other, serving however, at higher level, similar goals and functionalities for the end-user. Scalability, common operational framework, decentralization and maximum user inclusion are some of the most important properties that a technical and commercial successful solution must provide. Search and Rescue (SnR) aims to design, implement and test through a series of large-scale pilot scenarios a highly interoperable, modular open architecture platform for first responders’, a governance model designed to operate more effectively, and its architectural structure to allow easy incorporation of next generation R&D and COTS solutions, support a unified vision of the EU role and provide a common framework to assess needs and integrate responses for first responders. The present report, titled D9.5 Exploitation and Innovation MGT planning, aims to establish a structured, yet flexible mechanism and related processes, which will penetrate all project’s activities throughout the entire project’s lifetime, in order to ensure that high levels of innovation are maintained, as expected and described in the project’s grand. The ambitious objectives of SnR are placed within the complex landscape of Search and Rescue research in Europe, currently co-shaped by several actors, stakeholders, other research projects and policies. It is therefore of paramount importance that a large-sized project, with the cooperation of 29 partners of diverse backgrounds (industry, research, policy, operations), coming from 13 EU-member states requires a coordination and monitoring of all its activities, with a view of constant innovation in all its activities. To ensure that goals of SnR do not lose relevance, a detailed plan for constant monitoring of the project targets is required. The report describes the Exploitation and Innovation MGT planning, which is comprised by a detailed analysis of previous and ongoing research and innovation activities in the Search and Rescue deployment field at the EU level, the Key Innovation Elements in SnR as well as those deliverables of the project that have a high innovation potential and will be closely monitored during the course of the project. It also provides a framework for assessing innovation throughout the course of the project, with a set of specific Innovation Metrics, related to the Key Innovation Elements of the project.