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Atos Origin leads ORCHESTRA - One of the European Union’s major research and innovation projects for risk management


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Through development and implementation of a Service Oriented Architecture for EU Risk Management, Atos Origin helps European national and local governments predict and react to natural disasters
London, Madrid, Paris May 2008 -Atos Origin, an international IT services company, today announced that it has completed implementation of one of the European Union’s major research and innovation projects for risk management – ORCHESTRA. The aim of ORCHESTRA is to help national and local governments predict and react to natural disasters by joining up national and local information systems and applications.



Atos Origin, selected in 2004 by the European Union, has led a consortium of 14 organisations to design and implement a standards based IT architecture that supports the risk and crisis management operations of Governments and Public Institutions across Europe. The new Service Oriented Architecture has already brought significant benefits including the provision of better access to risk management information bringing greater service efficiency. It has enabled interoperability, and facilitates cost reduction through standardisation, reduced time-to-market and more competitive and improved business models for risk management authorities.



“Atos Origin has been instrumental in the development and implementation of ORCHESTRA and we have been impressed by the team’s collaborative and innovative approach to ensuring the project is a success,” said Mercé Griera I Fisa at the European Commission.



José F. Esteban Operations Manager at Atos Origin in Spain and coordinator of ORCHESTRA adds: “We are now collaborating with nearly 20 on-going projects and initiatives including projects outside of Europe. Our future plans include extending the architecture and risk technology to other areas, developing field applications to deal with events such as earthquakes and man-made risks.”



As part of the ORCHESTRA project, Atos Origin has also led the development and implementation of applications for four specific scenarios. There are flash floods and forest fires in North East Spain; the effects of earthquakes / floods on road traffic on the French / Italian border; the impact of ship traffic on pollution in the German Bight and forest fires and floods on a pan-European level. In this last implementation, ORCHESTRA applications help experts of the European Commission work with forest fire and flood information coming from all Member States of the EU.



ORCHESTRA has contributed to interoperability standards on a global level and has raised awareness and interest worldwide, helping consolidate the risk management community. Indeed, the ORCHESTRA architecture is also being applied for the tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean.



“At Atos Origin we are aware that IT services can make a real contribution to creating long-term value to society at large and the ORCHESTRA project is an excellent example which demonstrates that IT can support sustainability” said Alberto Gascón, Business Unit Director Consulting & Public Sector at Atos Origin in Spain. “We are delighted to be leading this project and are focused on extending the project to help Governments predict and respond to natural disasters.”



In September 2007 ORCHESTRA was the first architecture to be awarded ‘Best Practice’ status by the Open Geospatial Consortium, the world-wide body for geospatial information standards. The project, with significant support from the European Commission is seen as one of the building blocks contributing to the Shared Environmental Information System in Europe (SEIS).



The ORCHESTRA project has been co-financed by the European Commission, DG Information Society & Media, Unit H4 “ICT for Sustainable Growth”, within the 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. For further information, please visit http://www.eu-orchestra.org



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