Technological advances in high performance computing are creating exciting new opportunities that move well beyond improving the precision of simulation models. The use of extreme computing in real-time applications with high velocity data and live analytics is within reach. The availability of fast growing social and sensor networks raise new possibilities in monitoring, assessing and predicting environmental, social and economic incidents as they happen. Add in grand challenges in data fusion, analysis and visualization, and extreme computing hardware has an increasingly essential role in enabling efficient processing workflows for huge heterogeneous data streams. VESTEC will create the software solutions needed to realise this vision for urgent decision making in various fields with high impact for the European community. VESTEC will build a flexible toolchain to combine multiple data sources, efficiently extract essential features, enable flexible scheduling and interactive supercomputing, and realise 3D

2018 was a glimpse of the future: deadly mega-fires in Mediterranean and numerous wildfires in temperate and boreal regions. Traditional mono-disciplinary attitudes cannot solve this challenge: there is a critical need to change management paradigms from fire resistance to landscape resilience: Living with Fire. PyroLife trains the new generation of interdisciplinary experts in holistic integrated fire management, through knowledge transfer between South and NW Europe and application of lessons learned in prevention of floods and other risks. Our unique integrated training program, crucially developed with industry, provides 15 ESRs the in-depth, interdisciplinary, integrated and transferable knowledge and skills required to complete their research and maximize future employability. Individual projects target risk quantification (fire danger, vulnerability, (mega)fire behavior, environmental and economic impacts), risk reduction (fire resilient home, garden and landscape design, prevention and governance), and risk communication (stimulating stakeholder and community resilience and preparedness). PyroLife is original for its inter- and transdisciplinary, intersectoral, cross-risk, and cross-climate approach to training doctoral students and tackling wildfire challenges, connecting 21 diverse partners. The project structures doctoral training by being the first large and integrated doctoral training program on wildfires globally, being a leading example for training of our future leaders. With an exemplary gender balance and diversity in industry and academia, PyroLife combines excellent research and supervision to make an impact on society and economy, through broad dissemination and communication. With the Commission’s Nov 2018 call for integrated fire management to ‘tackle the global EU wildfire problem’, the timeliness of PyroLife cannot be overstated. Funding of PyroLife provides the diverse fire experts Europe urgently needs in academia and practice.

The project aims at improving preparedness of societies to cope with complex crisis situations by means of providing integrated tools to support efficient response planning and the building of realistic multidisciplinary scenarios. The project will design and develop a system for improving response planning strategies and scenario building (TRL 7 or 8) and facilitating organizational coordination among many actors, integrating a wide range of support tools to be used operationally by a large variety of stakeholders (firefighting units, medical emergency services, police departments, civil protection units, command and control centres). The devised system shall integrate existing and newly developed tools to enhance the cooperation between autonomous systems (satellite-, sea-, land- and air-based) from different agencies as well as to consolidate the methodology for cross-border scenario-building. The project shall investigate the currently existing tools and methodologies with the involvement of local author