Salzburg in Austria recently hosted what is thought to be the largest disaster response exercise in Europe, Operation Taranis. The European Union (EU) co-funded project, ran in June 2013.
The scenario: severe storms and rain in Salzburg and its surrounds had caused landslides, buildings to collapse and flooding. This had led to trains and boats in trouble; a plane crash at the airport and chemical leaks at two nearby towns. National emergency response vehicles were deployed for many weeks. The Austrian Minister for the Interior and the Salzburg authorities then decided to deploy aid through the EU civil protection response system. Some 900 emergency response units from seven countries attended 22 hypothetical emergency incidents, over three days.
The company responsible for Operation Taranis was Excon. They appointed LaBoe Security OG to provide remote viewing, transmission and monitoring of all the incidents and the responses. Despite the huge scale of the operation, each of the 22 incidents was monitored in real-time. Full HD, IP cameras from Grundig provided the images and VMS software from Alnet Systems provided control. The cameras were mounted on hydraulic, telescopic masts and powered by batteries. Their HD images were sent over wireless IP, by fibre optic or by a 3G mobile network. A walk-in observation room contained Grundig Full HD monitors along with three video walls. Each incident was also remotely monitored by the EU in Brussels, the Red Cross headquarters in Salzburg and at Excon’s HQ.
Exercise director and Salzburg’s “security commissioner”, Anton Holzer, said: “All the teams have excelled in providing an outstanding emergency response. They demonstrated a high level of competence and effective, co-operative communications. They not only carried out their difficult tasks with great professionalism and competence, but also with passion and enthusiasm.”
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