The Fundación Valenciaport is participating in the STAMINA project which will propose a set of decision support technologies for the prediction and management of pandemics

The STAMINA project involves thirty-eight partners from sixteen countries and has a budget of around 9.5 million euros.

Valencia – 21.09.20. This morning the kick-off meeting of the STAMINA project (Demonstration of intelligent decision support for pandemic crisis prediction and management within and across European borders) took place, an initiative co-financed by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme that has brought together thirty-eight partners from sixteen countries with the common objective of proposing a set of decision support technologies for the prediction and management of pandemics within and across European Union (EU) borders.

This project, led by EXUS Software and in which the Fundación Valenciaport participates, has a total budget of around 9,500,000 euros and is expected to be developed over a period of 24 months, ending in August 2023.

The coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19), which began in December 2019, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 virus (SARS-CoV-2), was recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a global pandemic in March 2020 and is present on all five continents.

While COVID-19 is the first major virus of the 21st century to appear without an immediate cure, there are many other examples of recent pandemics such as the 2009 pandemic (H1N1) flu, the 2011 Escherichia Coli outbreak in Germany, the Ebola virus in 2014, the Zika virus in 2016 or the West Nile virus in Southern and Eastern European countries in 2019, which show how new infections can emerge at any time.

In this context, the STAMINA project proposes the demonstration of technologies and strategies that improve the capacity to respond to potential risk situations in the face of limited biosafety/biodefence certification, reports of inadequately trained/trained health personnel for an appropriate reaction to a pandemic and its consequent danger of spreading certain diseases.

In particular, in the port area and due to the constant entry and exit of passengers from outside the EU by cruise ships or ferry (e.g. the Algeria-Valencia ferry, or in other ports in cross-strait operations, etc.) as well as the possible disembarkation and care of refugees, it is necessary to provide ports with transit areas and advanced tools to manage the safety of people’s health by preventing potential contagion of infectious diseases (e.g. Ebola), as well as their spread.

Among the expected results of this initiative are the following:

– Develop an inventory of best practices and guidelines to improve preparedness, performance and response to risk situations.

– To provide stakeholders with innovative diagnostic tools with advanced visualisation and incorporating more accurate predictive models for EU decision-making.

– To increase diagnostic capabilities.

– Establish cooperation between EU Member States and neighbouring countries. STAMINA has partners from Greece, Austria, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Tunisia, Lithuania, Spain, Slovenia, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Romania and Luxembourg, among which are the Spanish entities: Valencia Local Police, Spanish Red Cross and Fundación Valenciaport.