The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), one of Europe’s leading technical universities, has made substantial contributions to the PANTHEON project across several work areas. Their main focus has been on the integration and use of drone technologies in emergency response scenarios, as well as advancing the project’s open data policy. Additional contributions include participatory platform design, analysis of community-based disaster risk management (DRM) practices, and monitoring and recommendations for the project pilots.

Coordinating Heterogeneous Drone Fleets for Emergency Response

A major innovation of PANTHEON is the integration of first-responder drone fleets as core resources within DRM systems. The project assumes that, during large-scale emergencies, every available drone can be valuable, ranging from high-performance models to smaller, less capable devices. Any asset that accelerates situational awareness can significantly support response efforts.

To address this, UPC and ENAC developed a robust three-step methodology for coordinating heterogeneous drone fleets. This approach can fully organise up to 20 drones in under two minutes, generating per-drone flight plans that ensure optimal area coverage with uniform precision and the fastest possible execution time. These capabilities are demonstrated through simulations within the PANTHEON platform, supporting both training and operational planning.

Advancing Open Data: The PANTHEON Data Management Plan

UPC’s second major contribution lies in the development of the project’s Data Management Plan (DMP). The DMP outlines the 47 datasets currently produced by the project and establishes processes to ensure they are curated, preserved, and made accessible for verification, reuse, and exploitation by third parties.

PANTHEON has selected ZENODO, the trusted OpenAIRE repository hosted by CERN, as its public open-data platform. Metadata is being standardised to ensure consistent vocabulary, and the project recommends the use of the CC BY 4.0 licence to support broad reuse by the scientific community. To balance openness with consortium interests, an embargo period of six months after project completion has been applied.

The DMP is fully aligned with the FAIR principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—thereby enhancing knowledge discovery, promoting transparency, and maximising the long-term impact of the project’s outputs. ZENODO’s built-in community curation processes further ensure data quality and reliability.