UNICORN addresses the growing threats of climate change and geohazards by providing innovative solutions for emergency management and disaster resilience. The project targets sectors such as first responders, insurance, forest industries, and utilities, offering them tools for real-time hazard monitoring, risk assessment, and proactive response. By combining Earth Observation data with advanced technologies, UNICORN delivers:
UNICORN emphasizes collaboration, open-source development, and data sharing, working to enhance the resilience of European regions against extreme events. The project validates its solutions through four real-world use cases, ensuring that the tools meet the needs of end users. The ultimate goal is to provide Copernicus-based applications that help local authorities, industries, and citizens better prepare for, predict, and respond to natural disasters, integrating scientific insights into emergency management and climate adaptation policies.
Leveraging on a networked and collaborative approach, COLLARIS is building a European capacity that enhances the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in disaster risk management, covering the entire cycle from preparedness to response and recovery. The project is designing and developing a sustainable ecosystem that enables civil protection actors, first responders, and engineers to work together to share knowledge, harmonize procedures, and deploy drones efficiently during crisis situations.
Operational awareness is supported by practical activities such as the development of common operational procedures, real-time monitoring of disaster areas using drones, and simulations to improve the coordination of air operations and ground teams. COLLARIS also addresses the challenges of integrating UAS into air traffic management and explores emerging technologies for training, including virtual environments and simulators.
The network will allow the collaboration of different user profiles-first responders, crisis managers, and technical experts-who will share best practices, develop training, and test new solutions through joint exercises and virtual simulations. This collaborative environment will foster a comprehensive and common understanding of how to integrate drone-based solutions in civil protection and emergency management.
COLLARIS provides a networking platform within the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network, supporting information exchange, joint experiments, and hands-on training.
Activities include:
Key Deliverables:
The project supports proactive disaster preparedness and response, contributing to a more resilient and coordinated European crisis management system, and shaping a future where drones are an integral part of saving lives and protecting the environment during emergencies.
Emergency management policies are defined at local, regional, national and EU level. The adoption of novel emergency management systems also depends on policy compliance as well on their compatibility with the operational procedures in force within emergency practitioners.
Since the projects will use data from the Copernicus services, developing modular intelligent services, earth Observation community will be targeted to exchange information and make synergies.
The projects will develop innovative solutions for disaster risk reduction and will collect and classify valuable information that could be valuable for the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) industry. These stakeholders can leverage on the outcomes for making their products and services more competitive.
Other private and public industries that could benefit from novel disaster risk reduction products and service are ICT, real estate, public utilities (critical infrastructure), and agriculture.
This category represent the official agencies which work on environmental issues (e.g. water, biodiversity), whether regulation, monitoring, information or policies.
The development and implementation of new solutions for disaster risk management will encourage international collaborations among experts of different research fields while fostering scientific dissemination and knowledge exchange within Europe and beyond.
All the stakeholders at the forefront of the fight against disasters including among others, first responders, civil protection, and civil society organizations. They will be key players, sharing experiences, knowledge and best practices and being the main end-user of the projects outcomes.
They are security practitioners working at command centres, knowledge as well as regional and local authorities who support the first responders in fighting against disasters by providing them with essential information. They include municipalities, prefectures, local or regional governments, ministries (regional and central), authorities or offices of those governments and the central governments.
All the projects aim at enhancing the resilience of the European society and thus all citizens are one of the main stakeholder clusters. Citizens will be engaged in the projects to provide them with valuable information that will raise their awareness about the risk posed by natural and technological hazards and about self-protection behaviours, thus improving their risk perception and increasing their resilience against future emergencies.
Media and networks, including journalists, TV respondents and networking clusters, are the dissemination channels which will support the projects in reaching end-users and all other beneficiaries (general public).
Project funded in the Horizon Europe Programme (CALL:HORIZON-EUSPA-2021-SPACE) under Grant Agreement 101082320
