Humanitarian relief efforts are often hampered by the inability of the different international and local bodies involved to properly communicate and share information. GTD, together with a selected group of European researchers have come up with a new system to overcome this barrier.When a relief agency becomes involved in an emergency situation like the aftermath of an earthquake, typhoon or tsunami, it is vital to have as much information as possible so the mission planners know how to best use the resources at their disposal.There have been efforts made by various international bodies, including the United Nations and the European Commission, to develop harmonised standards which make it possible for different organisations speaking different languages and using different technologies to access information such as satellite images, photographs and maps.The EU-funded STREAM project has taken this work a step further by creating an IT platform which supports all of these standards, and brings the different information together, so it can be accessed from a single entry point by everybody who needs to use it.According to project coordinator Prof Hichem Sahli, the project has three main objectives.· The first is workflow management to ensure the headquarters can monitor who is doing what and where.· The second is creating a harmonised description of what people are doing, collecting information which can be shared by the different organisations in the field.· Thirdly, STREAM deals with data archiving and the free access to data by both decisionmakers and field workers. Quite often when an outside agency responds to an emergency situation, it creates data, uses it for its own purposes and either takes it away or destroys it when pulling out, so nothing is left for the local bodies on the ground
