ECHO’s Technical Meeting in Greece
25th May 2026
On 14th May 2026, ECHO held a Technical Meeting in Athens, Greece. Here, the project’s technical partners met to discuss the ECHO solutions. These are technologies designed to support resilience planning and management for multi-hazard threats.
The Knowledge Hub
The meeting opened with Engineering Group’s (ENG) presentation of the Knowledge Hub. The Knowledge Hub is a web-based cooperative knowledge-sharing platform. It will contain a catalogue of resources for resilience planning, preparedness and management for Critical Infrastructure stakeholders across Europe. Resources will include resilience plans, procedures, templates and post-event reports. This tool will support cross-organisational knowledge sharing through a user-friendly interface. It will also feature an AI-powered chatbot that enables users to query the stored content using natural language. This will enable easier access to relevant information without users having to manually browse documents, which saves time for Critical Infrastructure stakeholders during crises.
Novel Threat Monitoring and Forecasting
Next, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) discussed the Novel Threat Monitoring and Forecasting Service. This tool monitors and forecasts multiple hazards in real time, predicts the impact of events before they occur, and mitigates risks throughout the service life-cycle. It also forecasts the build-up of interconnected hazards. An example of such is the fusion of weather and infrastructure data, such as the forecasting of flood damages to a hospital.
Resilience Plan Evaluation
CERTH then moved to the Resilience Plan Evaluation, which was identified as the highest priority feature and starting point for development. This functionality enables organisations to design and draft their own resilience plans, as doing so requires access to certain information and personnel with skillsets that not all organisations have, especially the smaller, local organisations that ECHO aims to facilitate. The Resilience Plan Evaluation will enable organisations to quickly create location-specific, relevant and valid resilience plans. It will assess these plans against predefined criteria such as hazard coverage, completeness and timeliness, as well as compare them to existing plans, whereby overlaps, inconsistencies and gaps between documents are identified.
Resilience Simulation and Training
After lunch, NCI presented the Resilience Simulation and Training tool, which generates relevant and tailored training modules for different user groups. Scenario simulations will enable organisations to create custom training scenarios based on selected threats, such as earthquakes and floods, as well as available services. The tool will simulate the selected scenarios, whereby stakeholders will train in immersive, data-driven environments that mirror the complexities of actual crises. NCI highlighted that the realism of scenarios can be improved by integrating data from other tools and historical events.
Resources Orchestrator
The day closed with a discussion of the ECHO Resource Orchestrator (RSO), a tool designed to manage information about available resources and support decision-making during emergencies. Its main function is to recommend optimal allocation of resources based on availability, location, and operational constraints. It was emphasised that the system provides recommendations rather than enforcing constraints. Final decisions remain with human operators, reflecting real-world coordination processes.
The meeting concluded with agreement on the overall direction and prioritisation of features across all the ECHO components. ECHO looks forward to enhancing urban resilience and management with our innovative suite of technological solutions.
