Authors: Guillaume Inglese and Nicolas Moreau, CS Group
In today’s interconnected world, the digitalization of information has transformed the way we handle and exchange data. Rapid technological change has enabled the seamless transfer of information across various platforms, breaking down geographical barriers and facilitating real-time collaboration. However, this digital transformation also brings significant challenges, particularly in relation to data traceability and access handling. This article showcases the importance of data traceability and access handling in crisis management and presents how the NOUS project provides opportunities to explore blockchain technologies to reinforce these aspects.
In this digital era, vast amounts of data can be collected, generated, analyzed, and stored in a short period. Traceability, the ability to track the origin, movement, and transformation of data throughout its lifecycle, is essential in maintaining transparency and accountability. It allows organizations to pinpoint the source of any discrepancies, follow the flow of information, and ensure that data remains unaltered and reliable. Moreover, digitalization necessitates robust access handling mechanisms. With data being accessed by multiple stakeholders, both inside and outside an organization, it is crucial to implement stringent access controls. Proper access handling ensures that only authorized individuals can access sensitive information, thereby safeguarding it from unauthorized use, breaches, and potential misuse. This not only protects the privacy and confidentiality of data but also helps in complying with regulatory requirements.
In the context of crisis management, the need for data traceability and access handling is crucial for several reasons:
- Swift response: Having access to accurate and timely data is essential for making informed decisions. Traceability and proper access handling provide the ability to quickly identify and verify data sources, which can significantly speed up the decision-making process as information can be trusted.
- Accountability: Traceability helps in identifying the origin of problems and understanding the evolution of impacts. Access handling ensures that there is a clear record of who accessed what data and when, which is crucial for accountability.
- Transparency and Compliance: Many regulatory frameworks require data traceability to ensure that organizations are adhering to legal and ethical standards. In addition, transparency allows organizations to provide clear and accurate information about the situation and the actions being taken.
- Learning and Improvement: Traceability provides valuable data that can be analyzed post-crisis to identify gaps and gain experience feedback, improving future crisis management procedures.
In the NOUS project, CS GROUP is leading a use case related to the Crisis Management and Civil Protection system and is studying means to improve the capacities of its cloud-based CRIMSON product, a European reference platform for crisis management, by porting it to the NOUS platform and exploiting its envisioned data-life-cycle management capabilities to handle the access and traceability of the mass of data exchanged by all the CRIMSON users from multiple organizations during major crises.
CRIMSON enables the sharing of geospatial and situational information on a need-to-know basis between multiple stakeholders in several interconnected command centers and with first responders on the field, using the CRIMSON mobile app. It is used for the surveillance of the environment and critical infrastructures, and the management of crises offering improved situational awareness and operation management capacities. For this, it aggregates in a digital twin of the environment, massive multi-format 2D/3D/4D information from all available sources (GIS, COPERNICUS, EFFIS, drones, sensors, and other crisis management systems) by supporting numerous standards. All CRIMSON instances (Command Centers on stakeholders’ premises, Mobile Command Centers on the field, as well as mobile apps) are interconnected using edge devices and centralized data gateways that also enable the interoperation with numerous legacy systems such as Video Management Systems, Sensor networks, and other Command Centers.
The need is then to manage the creation, modification, and deletion of any information by a robust access right and right-to-know management system, with editions also being traceable during the whole data lifecycle for later after-action analysis and potential judicialization of an incident. In the scope of NOUS, the use of blockchain will be explored to leverage the key features of these technologies while balancing its limitations regarding crisis management. More specifically, Decentralization (data not being stored in a single location but across multiple nodes avoiding a single point of failure), Immutability (Once data is recorded on a blockchain, it prevents easy alteration or deletion, a global consensus is needed, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the data), Transparency and Auditability (providing a transparent ledger where all transactions are visible to authorized participants, which helps in building trust among stakeholders, as they can verify the data independently), and the use of smart contracts (self-executing contracts automating processes and ensuring that actions are taken when specific conditions are met, reducing the need for manual intervention and thus speeding up the response) could help in reinforcing the traceability of the current platform, with specific attention being paid to the inherent overhead to the technology.
In conclusion, in the realm of crisis management, whether dealing with natural or man-made disasters, robust data traceability is not just a luxury, it’s a necessity for the response and after-review phases. NOUS provides a unique opportunity to find the best use of new technologies to ensure involved agencies that the data is accurately and securely traced throughout its lifecycle.
