Valencia Summit and Pilot: AI-Enabled Flood Response Put to the Test
LEAD-PRO's next major milestone takes place in Valencia this June, bringing together European emergency responders, law enforcement, researchers and technology partners to test AI-supported disaster response in one of the project's largest live exercises to date.
International Summit on Emergency Management, Disaster Response and Urban Resilience — 18 June
Valencia Local Police Headquarters hosted a summit gathering representatives from the European Commission, emergency-response authorities, law enforcement agencies, researchers and technology organisations. Sessions covered emergency coordination, interoperability, resilient communications and the lessons drawn from the October 2024 Valencia DANA floods, feeding directly into future preparedness frameworks. Confirmed participants include DG ECHO, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Valencia City Council, Thales and TNO, alongside emergency coordination authorities from across Europe.
Jose Luis Diego, Head of the Innovation and Project Management Division at Valencia Local Police, has emphasised that effective emergency response rests on coordination, situational awareness and fast decision-making under pressure, and that initiatives such as LEAD-PRO give responders a way to test technologies and procedures in realistic scenarios that strengthen preparedness.
Live Pilot Exercise — 19 June, La Torre District
The following day, a large-scale, multi-agency exercise simulated escalating flood conditions affecting critical infrastructure and public safety, including school evacuation and search-and-rescue operations. Police, fire brigades, civil protection teams and emergency services coordinated their response using AI-supported situational awareness tools.
The pilot put the following capabilities through their paces:
Drone and CCTV-enabled monitoring
Real-time operational mapping
School evacuation procedures
Search-and-rescue simulations
Advanced Command Post coordination and multi-agency decision-making
AI-supported operational analysis and alerts
This builds on LEAD-PRO's first large-scale pilot in Kaunas, Lithuania, where more than 300 officers from six countries validated the platform under live cyber-physical security and emergency-response conditions.
About LEAD-PRO
LEAD-PRO (Law Enforcement Assistance for Disaster Prediction and Recovery Optimisation) is a Horizon Europe Innovation Action, Grant Agreement No. 101168492, under HORIZON-CL3-2023-SSRI-01. The project is building an operational, near market-ready platform to reduce law enforcement response times, sharpen decision-making, and make better use of human and material resources across disaster and public-safety events. Capabilities under development span task planning, geolocation, communications, video streaming, Command and Control, real-time Command Post visualisation, drone management, visual computing, data analysis and situational awareness.
ISACA's Role
As a LEAD-PRO consortium partner, ISACA brings its expertise in digital trust, cybersecurity, governance and professional capability development, helping ensure the technologies being tested are secure, trustworthy and well governed. Chris Dimitriadis, ISACA's Chief Global Strategy Officer, has pointed to the growing dependence of emergency management on trusted digital coordination and on professionals equipped to operate where cyber, physical and operational risks intersect, and framed ISACA's contribution through LEAD-PRO in those terms.
