UBITECH proudly announces its participation in the launch of the ECHO project (“Empowering and Connecting Diverse Communities for Multi-Hazard Resilience with Open Data, Open Models, and Open-Source Software”), a new Horizon Europe research and innovation action funded by the European Union. The project’s Kick-Off Meeting, hosted by Netcompany S.A., took place on October 9–10, 2025, in Athens, Greece, bringing together leading European organizations committed to building a safer, more resilient Europe in the face of growing environmental and digital challenges. The ECHO project addresses the mounting challenges faced by modern, interconnected (peri-)urban areas—driven by increasing digitalization, interdependencies, and the rising threats of climate change, natural disasters, and cyberattacks. ECHO’s vision is to create a multi-level Resilience Ecosystem that unites Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators, Emergency Service Providers, and local and regional authorities to co-create innovative tools, services, and strategies that enhance resilience planning and management capabilities.
ECHO will develop an EU-sovereign Knowledge Hub and a suite of interoperable, modular, and cost-effective services accessible through a centralized platform. These include advanced tools for threat forecasting, risk assessment, situational awareness, decision support, resilience plan evaluation, and scenario-based simulations. Leveraging Generative AI, ECHO enables enhanced modeling, forecasting, and decision-making, while ensuring transparency, explainability, and data protection. The project will validate its solutions through four pilot sites in Slovenia, Italy, Spain, and the cross-border Italy–Slovenia region, addressing diverse hazards and engaging multiple stakeholders to ensure real-world impact, scalability, and transferability across Europe.
UBITECH leads critical technical and organizational activities that underpin the ECHO ecosystem. Specifically, UBITECH will:
- formulate, consolidate, and prioritize business, usage, functional, and implementation requirements following the IIRA and EIRA methodologies, applying a transparent voting process to resolve conflicts and prioritize core features.
- coordinate the identification and integration of open and proprietary data sources, repositories, and collections, while also generating new datasets based on pilot feedback.
- develop the project’s Data Management Plan (DMP) and coordinate data protection methodologies, ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards.
- implement zero-trust mechanisms for data and software assets, including authentication, encryption, integrity verification, and device attestation to guarantee end-to-end security and trustworthiness.
These activities are spearheaded by UBITECH’s Data & AI Systems (DAI) Research Group (https://ubitech.eu/dai/), led by Dr. Sophia Karagiorgou, who stated: “ECHO represents a unique opportunity to empower European communities to anticipate, withstand, and recover from complex hazards. By leveraging open technologies and data-driven intelligence, we aim to build a foundation for collaborative, sustainable resilience across Europe.”
For more info, please visit https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101212947https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101225575
