On Monday, I had a half day meeting with a group of researchers from University of Aarhus in Denmark. They presented a study on interactive collaborative systems for improved situation awareness and coordination in public events. As part of the EU-project Palcoom, they designed an impressive system that helped public safety actors (police, fire services, paramedics) to coordinate and control emergeing situations during the Tallships Race 2007, at a stop-over in the Aarhus harbour.They used interactive wall displays with digital representations of the event area, mobile phones for positioning of personnell as well as video streaming and photo sharing to the command centre. Preben Mogensen (Aarhus univ), Margit Kristensen (Aarhus univ), Michael Christensen (Aarhus univ) and Boris Magnusson (Lund Univ). Their study showed how the use of wall-size displays togehter with mobile devices as data feeders could provide a common operating picture for the response actors.

At the meeting, myself and Urban Nulden (IT-univ, Göteborg University) presented the public safety research done in collaboration between the Viktoria Institute and the IT-university at the Göteborg University.