ECHO Project: Empowering and Connecting Diverse Communities for Multi-Hazard Resilience
The ECHO project is a European Union–funded initiative aimed at enhancing urban resilience planning and management across Europe. As urban and peri-urban areas become increasingly digital, interconnected and exposed to threats such as climate change, natural disasters and cyber-attacks, ECHO addresses the urgent need to safeguard critical infrastructures and the essential services they support.
Researchers from the Information Processing and Telecommunications Center (IPTC), at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), actively participate in the project, contributing scientific expertise to the development of innovative, scalable and interoperable solutions. ECHO creates a multi-level Resilience Ecosystem that brings together critical infrastructure operators, emergency service providers and local and regional authorities to co-design tools, services and strategies tailored to real operational needs.
The project objectives include the development of a Resilience Strategy, an Information Sharing Protocol and an EU-sovereign Knowledge Hub, all accessible through a centralized digital platform. This platform integrates Generative Artificial Intelligence tools for threat forecasting, risk assessment, situational awareness, decision support, resilience plan evaluation and scenario-based simulations addressing multiple hazards such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, wildfires and cyber-attacks.
ECHO solutions are validated through four real-world pilot sites across Europe, including Spain, ensuring adaptability and transferability to different urban contexts. Potential applications of the research include improved emergency preparedness, enhanced coordination between public authorities and infrastructure operators, continuity of essential services (particularly healthcare) and evidence-based decision-making tools for resilient urban planning.
In the framework of the project, IPTC colleagues José María del Álamo, Principal Investigator of the ECHO project, and Javier Andión participated in an ECHO Workshop held in Málaga in December 2025, contributing to knowledge exchange and collaborative development with European stakeholders.
José María del Álamo: GS / ORCID / LinkedIn
Javier Andión: GS / ORCID / LinkedIn
Here you can see our colleague from the IPTC, José María del Álamo, being interviewed on Canal Málaga about the project, starting at minute 5:05: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R1vnBGeBds
Related information:
Project website: https://echo-horizon.eu/partners/
Grant agreement ID: 101225575
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101225575
Original source of the image: Published online on December 23, 2025 https://short.upm.es/hg3o3
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iptc-upm/
For more information: www.iptc.upm.es
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