B-prepared Project

When you go to an expo, you expect to have some mildly curious people lingering, a few exhibitors sitting expectantly at their demo stations, and a general lukewarm vibe filling up the hall(s)… Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the Nordic Game!

When you’re thinking about South America, disaster preparedness is probably not your first thought. It’s alright, no blame. However, based on this recent conference, you shall add the topic to the list.

Live Drill Becomes Live dREAL – “LIVE DRILL in Rowy 2026” A B-prepared field event in Ustka Commune, Poland – 25 June 2026 and some more Every live drill carries one line buried in its script: “REAL EVENT – STOP EXERCISE.” It is the command that turns a simulation back into reality the moment a genuine emergency appears. On 25 June 2026, on the beach and dunes of Rowy, none of us imagined how literal that line was about to become. The “LIVE DRILL in Rowy 2026” joint rescue exercise brought the B-prepared philosophy out of the screen and onto the sand. In our exercise scenario, a crowded summer afternoon turns dangerous as a sudden change of weather triggers a chain of incidents, exactly the kind of situations citizens and first responders need to be ready for. Strong winds and high waves threaten swimmers; an elderly visitor faints on the shore; a man collapses in sudden cardiac arrest; another breaks a limb in an awkward, hard-to-reach spot among the dunes. For the purposes of our evaluation work, the script was deliberately built as a sequence of consecutive acts, even though, in reality, coastal emergencies rarely arrive one at a time. Four episodes, coordinated responses The drill unfolded across these four episodes, each testing a different capability. In the first, the WOPR water-rescue lifeguards responded to a swimmer stranded roughly 100 metres offshore and unable to return to land, locating the casualty, recovering them from the water, bringing them to shore, and handing them over to the medical team. The second episode centred on an elderly visitor who fainted in the heat on the shore. The teams stabilised her and carried her to safety across the soft sand. In the third, a man lost consciousness and stopped breathing in a sudden cardiac arrest, prompting responders to assess his vital functions, begin CPR, and use an AED. The fourth saw a tourist break a limb in a difficult, hard-to-reach part of the dunes, where treatment and evacuation across the loose sand and rocks became the real challenge.   Pulling it all together took genuine inter-service coordination: the Volunteer Water Rescue Service (WOPR), the Volunteer Fire Departments of Duninowo, Objazd and Zaleskie, the Emergency Medical Services, and also the Youth Firefighting Teams (MDP), who worked alongside the professionals throughout. Passing the skills on For B-prepared, the heart of the day, as of the project itself, was knowledge transfer: not only between generations of rescuers, but out to the citizens themselves. Participants rotated through four topic stations (cardiopulmonary resuscitation, first aid for trauma, evacuation of people with limited mobility, and rescue-equipment familiarisation) with experienced firefighters mentoring younger members directly. At the CPR station, the technique was practised on three different training mannequins (adult, child and infant) so that no age group was left out. The guiding question at every station was a deceptively simple one: what can you do in the crucial minutes before professional help arrives?   That message landed in the most unexpected way. A local holidaymaker wandered over to join in, and the most enthusiastic participant of all turned out to be a girl of about four. It was preparedness in its purest form: the early realisation that you don’t need to panic, you just need to do what you can. Partners on the ground The exercise was followed on-site by colleagues from the B-prepared consortium, who joined the professional responders as observers. They were watching the operations unfold, comparing approaches across countries, and gathering good practices to feed back into the project. Observing on behalf of the consortium were:   HUN-REN SZTAKI as Coordinator and Product owner, SFC as responsible for the drill and for CDE activities, USTKA as organizer, UNIGE, LIU, HVL, UNIBWM, TUB, NSKI as observers from academia/evaluation perspective and PUI, YMAP, AutRC  as observers from first responders side, EKON and eduGamitec as product owners of the B-prepared ecosystem, responsible for user behaviour analysis and continuous improvement of the knowledge base and of the LMS. When the drill stopped being a drill By the second day, the exercise script was almost overtaken by the real thing. A state heatwave warning was issued across the region. The B-prepared team did exactly what the project teaches: it adapted. Schedules were shifted, the most demanding outdoor activities were pulled into the cooler hours of the morning. The “live drill” had quietly become a “live dREAL.”   The team sat down for an evaluation meeting, led by our consortium partner HVL, and this is where the field event turned back into research. The aim is not to grade the responders or the rescue services; it is to compare the live drill, act by act, against our own B-prepared solution. Doing that rigorously means defining, with real precision, the critical and objective set of criteria, the evaluation methodology itself, against which a real-world exercise and a digital preparedness tool can meaningfully be measured side by side. And the heat finally hits On the third morning, the field walk was deliberately moved earlier to avoid heat exhaustion and sunstroke. We put the work back into the apps: the team field-tested the local IM-prepared walk as part of our ongoing app development, checking the on-site route, tasks and timing against real conditions on the very ground. Saturday afternoon brought a change of register. As part of Ustka Municipality Day, the team swapped the observer role for engagement and joined the celebrations as exhibitors, putting VR-prepared in front of the public. Twelve visitors stepped into the simulation and tried disaster preparedness for themselves, experiencing the KingTide scenario explicitly developed based on their homeland, Rowy Beach. The fun part was when they realized how familiar those places in VR actually looked. The heat was relentless, but curiosity kept winning out over the temperature. By the early evening hours, there were already signs that the weather problem ran deeper than anyone had expected. Driven by the heat, the local stretch of the Baltic coast had become saturated … Live Drill Becomes Live dREAL – “LIVE DRILL in Rowy 2026”

Bringing Preparedness to Life at ISCRAM 2026 The B-prepared project played an active role at the 23rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM 2026), held from 31st May to 3rd June in The Hague, Netherlands. Through scientific publications, a dedicated workshop and live demonstrations, the project showcased how innovative technologies can strengthen disaster preparedness and resilience.   Scientific Contributions   Several partners from the B-prepared consortium presented research papers covering topics such as virtual and augmented reality for preparedness training, serious games, situational awareness, cross-border crisis collaboration and simulation-based emergency exercises. These contributions reflect the project’s commitment to advancing evidence-based approaches to preparedness through digital innovation.   Workshop: Platforms for Increased Preparedness   A key event at the conference was the workshop “Platforms for Increased Preparedness,” organized by Ilona Heldal, Cecilia Hammar Wijkmark and András Majdik. The session brought together researchers and practitioners to explore how technologies such as VR, mobile applications, serious games and AI-supported tools can improve preparedness training for citizens and professionals. The workshop featured a keynote by András Majdik, coordinator of B-prepared, introducing the project’s ecosystem and demonstrating solutions including Disastropedia.com and VR-prepared. Additional presentations showcased IM-prepared (by Zsolt Márkus) and RU-prepared (by Attila Lengyel), highlighting the role of mobile learning and gamified engagement in preparedness.   An Unexpected Real-Life Exercise   One of the workshop’s most memorable moments occurred during a VR evacuation demonstration. As a virtual garage fire scenario was being presented, the building’s real fire alarm was triggered. Participants initially wondered whether the alarm was part of the simulation before realizing it was an actual evacuation. The experience provided an unexpected but valuable lesson in situational awareness and emergency response, reinforcing many of the workshop’s key themes.   Looking Ahead   The workshop attracted strong interest and lively discussions around the future of technology-supported preparedness training. Through its research, demonstrations and collaborative activities, B-prepared continues to contribute to innovative, inclusive and practical digital solutions that help strengthen preparedness and resilience across Europe.  More news Two Days in the Field: Consortium Members Visit PUI and the Brive-la-Gaillarde Fire Station Bringing Climate Awareness to Life: A Memorable Sustainability Week in Jászberény Are we prepared for Milestone 5? Bringing Virtual Reality to Disaster Resilience: B-prepared at the DRR Academy 2026 Joint Content Development Showcased at EXPO 2025 in Japan Innovating for Resilience: B-prepared at the 7th NSKI Interdisciplinary Conference B-prepared at Security Research Event 2025 VR and AR in focus at the PlayIT 2025 The B-prepared Hackathon As We Experienced It Intense preparation for next year’s live drill in Ustka More news Two Days in the Field: Consortium Members Visit PUI and the Brive-la-Gaillarde Fire Station Bringing Climate Awareness to Life: A Memorable Sustainability Week in Jászberény Are we prepared for Milestone 5? Bringing Virtual Reality to Disaster Resilience: B-prepared at the DRR Academy 2026 Joint Content Development Showcased at EXPO 2025 in Japan Innovating for Resilience: B-prepared at the 7th NSKI Interdisciplinary Conference B-prepared at Security Research Event 2025 VR and AR in focus at the PlayIT 2025 The B-prepared Hackathon As We Experienced It Intense preparation for next year’s live drill in Ustka ©2024 | B-PREPARED | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | Privacy Policy OBJECTIVE | NEWS | SUMMARY | PARTICIPANTS | APP | SUBSCRIBE OBJECTIVE | NEWS | SUMMARY PARTICIPANTS | APP | SUBSCRIBE ©2024 | B-PREPARED | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Privacy Policy

On 21–22 May 2026, members of the B-prepared consortium travelled to France for a two-day programme that went well beyond what any video call could achieve: combining deep stakeholder exchanges, a real-world field test of our mobile app, and a rare look inside a professional emergency response centre.

Between 21–23 April, the B-prepared project had the opportunity to visit Bercsényi Miklós Primary School in Jászberény, Hungary…

March 20 quietly marked an important workshop held for the B-prepared project, specifically checking technical readiness for Milestone 5.

Between 11 and 13 February, Zoltán Székely had the honour of representing Székely Family and Co. Nonprofit Llc. (SFC) at this year’s Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Academy hosted by the University of Salerno in Italy.

Joint Content Development Showcased at EXPO 2025 in Japan In the Horizon Europe project coordinated by HUN-REN SZTAKI called B-prepared, technical teams are continuously developing multilingual, interactive smartphone walks and virtual reality simulations. These contain gamified experiences based on various historical disaster events across Europe.    One of the jointly created walks — available in the  IM-prepared smartphone app— is titled “In the Footsteps of the 1838 Pest Flood”. It provides a detailed exploration of what happened at the affected locations, and offers practical guidance about correct and incorrect behaviours during flood situations.   This tech solution fills an educational gap: while information about flood defence strategies is traditionally found only in specialist textbooks, it can be difficult to understand without background knowledge. In contrast, this experience-based and interactive approach helps maintain broader public interest and makes practical knowledge more accessible.    Although Japan is highly advanced in digital technology, the idea of using it specifically for disaster preparedness — such as in hands-on training and education — gave the audience much to think about. In Japan, frequent earthquakes require mandatory disaster drills in schools and workplaces. By comparison, Hungary does not have similar compulsory practice drills, despite the increasing frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change and the vulnerabilities that it creates.   Original article in Hungarian available here: HUN-REN SZTAKI. In the Horizon Europe project coordinated by HUN-REN SZTAKI called B-prepared, technical teams are continuously developing multilingual, interactive smartphone walks and virtual reality simulations. These contain gamified experiences based on various historical disaster events across Europe.    One of the jointly created walks — available in the  IM-prepared smartphone app— is titled “In the Footsteps of the 1838 Pest Flood”. It provides a detailed exploration of what happened at the affected locations, and offers practical guidance about correct and incorrect behaviours during flood situations.   This tech solution fills an educational gap: while information about flood defence strategies is traditionally found only in specialist textbooks, it can be difficult to understand without background knowledge. In contrast, this experience-based and interactive approach helps maintain broader public interest and makes practical knowledge more accessible.    Although Japan is highly advanced in digital technology, the idea of using it specifically for disaster preparedness — such as in hands-on training and education — gave the audience much to think about. In Japan, frequent earthquakes require mandatory disaster drills in schools and workplaces. By comparison, Hungary does not have similar compulsory practice drills, despite the increasing frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change and the vulnerabilities that it creates.   Original article in Hungarian available here: HUN-REN SZTAKI. At the Hungarian Pavilion of EXPO 2025, Japanese experts and interested visitors could receive detailed information about the events of the Great Ice Flood of Pest in 1838, based on materials jointly developed by the eLearning Department of HUN-REN SZTAKI and the Faculty of Water Sciences of the Ludovika University of Public Service (NKE-VTK).    NKE-VTK had the opportunity to present itself at the World Expo, which took place between 13th April and 13th October on Yumeshima Island (a man-made island) in Osaka. The central theme of EXPO 2025 was “Designing the society of the future for a more sustainable world.” — focusing on creating more resilient communities. Associate Professor, Gábor Keve from NKE-VTK, gave a presentation during the event that focused on this remarkable historic event and its relevance, tying it into broader discussions about water and disaster management. More news Innovating for Resilience: B-prepared at the 7th NSKI Interdisciplinary Conference B-prepared at Security Research Event 2025 VR and AR in focus at the PlayIT 2025 The B-prepared Hackathon As We Experienced It Intense preparation for next year’s live drill in Ustka B-prepared Showcased at the EIB Summer School Alumni Gathering Exploring VR for Disaster Preparedness at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL): Insights from a VR Training Workshop HUN-REN SZTAKI and the B-prepared Project Support “Flags, When They Wave…” Drawing Contest IM-prepared Hackathon Challenges Explained WELCOME TO THE RU-PREPARED HACKATHON! More news Innovating for Resilience: B-prepared at the 7th NSKI Interdisciplinary Conference B-prepared at Security Research Event 2025 VR and AR in focus at the PlayIT 2025 The B-prepared Hackathon As We Experienced It Intense preparation for next year’s live drill in Ustka B-prepared Showcased at the EIB Summer School Alumni Gathering Exploring VR for Disaster Preparedness at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL): Insights from a VR Training Workshop HUN-REN SZTAKI and the B-prepared Project Support “Flags, When They Wave…” Drawing Contest IM-prepared Hackathon Challenges Explained WELCOME TO THE RU-PREPARED HACKATHON! ©2024 | B-PREPARED | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | Privacy Policy OBJECTIVE | NEWS | SUMMARY | PARTICIPANTS | APP | SUBSCRIBE OBJECTIVE | NEWS | SUMMARY PARTICIPANTS | APP | SUBSCRIBE ©2024 | B-PREPARED | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Privacy Policy