As agent-based social simulation is gaining ground as a candidate of choice for building decision-support tools in the management of complex socio-environmental systems, and as the resulting models are therefore being driven to produce more realistic outcomes, the issue of integrating large data corpuses (demographical, environmental, geographical…) as an input to these models becomes more critical. In such models, the evolution of simulations is partly being driven by social agents (which may represent individuals, households or institutions), whose behaviors are strongly determined by their attributes, connections with other agents, but also location in the artificial worlds they populate. Nowadays data becomes available (partly thanks to the Big Data and Open Data initiatives), generating synthetic populations of agents that conform to the data available on real populations becomes a necessity and a concern for most social modelers, and although several approaches have been undertaken in recent works, it constitutes a significant scientific and methodological challenge that we plan to address in this proposal. The first challenge concerns the conceptual and operational handling of scales, both the scale at which populations need to be generated and the scales at which data is available (or not). The ratio between these two scales will determine the use of robust and innovative up-scaling and down-scaling methods. Moreover, generating millions of agents or just a few hundreds is likely to involve completely different operational methods. The second challenge is a consequence of the previous one and requires building an adaptive tool. The necessity to couple several conceptual and operational methods has to rely on a complete understanding, description (and documentation) of their aims and means, so that users can choose the most adapted with respect to their needs, but should also be left to decide what is the most appropriate, given a scenario of generation (objectives, scales, data available, computational power available, time required, etc.). The Gen* project aims at combining applied mathematics and computer science approaches in order to incorporate arbitrary data and to generate statistically valid populations of artificial agents. Generic methods applicable to different use cases (e.g. urban/rural populations, downscaling needs…) will be provided and implemented in R and Java in order to be integrated as open-source libraries in existing agent-based simulation platforms. This offer will of course be completed with a methodological guide and several tutorials in order for end-users to master the methods and their combinations. Finally, a standalone, industrial-grade, application will also be developed independently from existing platforms, which will support a dedicated graphical user interface that will enable modelers to design, save and reuse workflows linking the different data sources, methods from the library and data converters (akin to what the Kepler platform offers) so as to generate artificial populations. All these developments will be undertaken by the consortium of the project, which has already a solid experience in managing large-scale open-source methodological projects dedicated to agent-based simulation. They will be primarily validated on several case studies provided by the partners, sufficiently diverse to enable the design of generic methods. In addition, our goal is to build a strong community of users and developers during the 42 months of the project. Outcomes (libraries, tools, documentation) will be delivered at regular intervals under an open source license; feedback from users (and validation on their case studies) will be sought during dedicated workshops; and we will use all means of dissemination to provide incentives to the international agent-based social simulation community to adopt, develop and improve the Gen* libraries.

The objective of the SURICATE project - SURveillance of InfrastruCtures (energy and transport) and environment, with long endurAnce remoTEd piloted air systems - is to deploy a UAV system for automatic searching or surveillance on a given extensive infrastructure, like energy, transport or communication network. The project aims to solve some technological key challenges, and also some regulatory challenges, and to test in real conditions the automatic searching / monitoring process. The scope of the project is to study the interest of using Unmanned Aerial Systems for civil applications, two of them being: * the surveillance of railways (for SNCF particularly), in order to figh against malicious acts and cables theft. * the other one the inspection of high voltage electric cables (for EDF, ERDF, RTE, and also SNCF). Some other applications are also addressed, like environment surveillance and pollution detection. The corresponding market is huge with several tens of thousands of km of cables or rails to be inspected in France only and operators looking for innovative and cheaper solutions than what is available today. Proving the feasability of an efficient solution based on UAVs at the end of this project could pave the way for very promising new markets for UAS use. However, introducing UAS into a civil / commercial marketplace requires to render the UAS a viable, cost effective and regulated alternative to existing resources, and many technological and regulatory key challenges have to be solved. Particularly, the following topics will be adressed in the SURICATE project. * Mission chain: type of sensors, algorithms for detection and tracking of objects of interest, video compression * Communication, with LOS and SATCOM data-links, using civil frequencies and medium bandwith systems. * Airspace regulation The final objective of the project is to propose a roadmap for the use of long endurance UAS for civil market, regarding technical , financial and regulatory aspects. The proposed roadmap should include short (2016), medium (2018) and long (>2020) term issues. The proposed consortium, leaded by CASSIDIAN, is composed of complementary expertises, mixing industrial (CASSIDIAN, Thales Alenia Space), SME (VITEC), university/rechearch institute (ENSEEIHT, Telecom ParisTech) and end-users (EDF, SNCF) teams.

The ANCHORS project aims to develop a crisis management system which integrates intervening personal, unmanned aerial vehicles, ground robots and a communication system which is based on a hybrid cellular and ad-hoc architecture. It can be seen as an “umbrella project” incorporating and evolving the interdisciplinary approaches in communication, unmanned systems, embedded devices, sensors and software development. Additionally to the envisaged holistic system-of-systems approach ANCHORS will endeavour to the scientific supreme discipline by providing novel experimental, simulative, analytical concepts and solutions in each research area. In order to guarantee the relevance of the developed concepts, the project includes final user as full partners and the whole French-German consortium is lead by a fire brigades institution. The project will address several thematics that are related to crisis management and more specifically to nuclear hazard incidents, the focus will be made on the aspects related to wireless communications, environment measurement and equipment control. For data measurement aspects, the project will develop and design a sensor array for air-bound and ground-bound detection of radioactive or nuclear material by means of a swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). The project aims to enhance the performance of these sensors in terms of sensitivity, energy consumption, and radionuclide identification. Since, the project relies on an intensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles; a significant part of the work will be dedicated to enhance these engines. The work will focus on the development and the implementation of a robust UAVs fulfilling the operational requirements. This includes specification of the used systems, UAV, possible additional flight platform for longer relay distances and the integration of UGVs, protection against radiation, energy optimization, a health management system including autonomous landing and recharging on the UGV and a mission control system. In all crisis management systems, communication is always is a critical aspect. That’s why; the project will commit a considerable amount of resources in order to develop a communication infrastructure for both rescue sub-system and sensors/robots sub-system. These sub-systems require robust and reliable communication modes in order to transfer multi-media streams, measurement data, messages and commands between individuals, vehicles and devices (sensors, robots). The work will focus on the specification of a hybrid ad-hoc and cellular architecture and will design specific communication nodes to be embedded in the UAVs. These nodes will operate as coordinators for and also as backup relays for the other communication equipments. In order to allow an autonomous deployment of UAVs, innovative methods and algorithms for the cooperative behaviour of single autonomous entities will be investigated and implemented. This includes communication protocols for the exchange between the team members as well as mobility and team working algorithms. For the fulfilment of the overall mission goal the team has to fulfil specific tasks while simultaneously maintaining connectivity to the other participants in the system Besides technical research, dedicated work will focus on the definition of relevant scenarios. Also specific tasks will be dedicated to the development of a demonstrator which validates the integration of the concepts that are developed by all the technical studies.

First responders and workers - e.g. in mining or power stations - are regularly exposed to hazards like high temperatures, gases, high dust concentrations and biological as well as nuclear hazards. Currently, these people cannot be tracked in areas or buildings where GPS is not available. In case they need help – e.g. if they need to be evacuated – precious time can be lost because their position is not known. This can lead to avoidable injuries or deaths. ROLOSEP will provide an all-embracing solution for improving the safety of these personnel through the use of specific equipment. This one will include robust embedded localization system and will allow real time tracking of the positions of personal operating on site, indoors as well as outdoors. The already existing equipment (PMR systems TETRA / TETRAPOL) for radio transmission will be upgraded to insure an automated communication with the command post and transmit important data such as the position or unconsciousness alarm. Depending on the mission additional information can be useful and transferred like temperature, status of the breathing apparatus and information from a dosimeter. The command post will monitor the movements, status as well as impact of the hazards on the rescue personal. The safety and security of the personal is monitored in real time. Decision-making is eased since operational and personal planning is enhanced significantly. The juridical implications of the project will be taken into account from the beginning of the project ("privacy by design") by the research unit “Dynamics of the law” (UMR 5815, CNRS-Montpellier 1 University), regarding Labour Law, protection of privacy and personal data protection, as well as any possible incidences concerning the utilization of collected data in order to hold penal inquiries.