Irish Project Tests Tool to Reduce Impact of Disasters on Public Health

On Friday, November 25th, members of the principal emergency response agencies and the voluntary services will participate in an exercise to test a decision support system designed to reduce the impact of large-scale disasters on public health. The event will take place in the Local Coordination Centre at the headquarters of Cork City Fire Brigade.

The online system has been developed by S-HELP (Securing Health, Emergency, Learning and Planning), a €3.5 million EU-funded research and development project led by University College Cork. It is a joint venture between nine organisations from across Europe, including four Irish partners – Dublin urban planning consultancy Future Analytics Consulting, UCC Business Information Systems, the HSE, and the ASSERT Centre, UCC.

Speaking about Friday’s exercise, Dr Karen Neville, S-HELP coordinator said ‘This simulated emergency scenario will involve extreme rainfall in several locations in the South West region, rising tides, tide-locking in estuaries and tidal reaches, and surface water flooding of rural areas, towns and urban locations.’

S-HELP is a three-year project that concludes in January 2017. It is a joint venture between nine organisations from across Europe, including four Irish partners – Future Analytics Consulting Ltd; UCC-BIS; the HSE; and the ASSERT Centre, UCC.

This is the last of three evaluation exercises conducted for the project. Last month, a simulated chemical explosion scenario was held in Dublin, and a pandemic exercise took place in Tel Aviv, Israel in September.