Situational Awareness and Command & Control of Rescue Forces in Alpine Regions

The aim of SAROTAR is to develop a satellite-based command and control system providing support in case of natural disasters in alpine regions like avalanches or accidents during mountaineering, improving response time, situational awareness and coordination of rescue forces. The service is based on GNSS for positioning and navigation. Topographic maps and high resolution orthophotos form the basis for geoinformation. As communication techniques, terrestrial and satellite communication is used to provide a high level of reliability and thus seamless communication between rescue forces, mission controllers and emergency management centres. The user groups for the SARONTAR services are the alpine rescue organisations like mountain rescue services and alpine police in Austria. Further users include national alerting and warning centres.