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“SAFIR : The Voice of Service”
Speech Automatic Friendly Interface Research

Context
Modern democracies are facing a growing number of information challenges, including:
• How to inform citizen
• How to offer an equal opportunity to both Internet literate and illiterate citizens
• How to provide access to existing data
• How to maintain these data and keep them up to data
• How to collect information in an efficient and easy way
• How to demonstrate that the administration is really a service for the citizens
At the same time, the governmental services, such as field employees, police, fire brigades, civil protection agents at all levels are facing a similar problem when operating in the field.

The SAFIR project
The Primary objective of SAFIR is to give an equal opportunity to individual citizens and groups of European citizens, public bodies or private companies to access, through easy devices, existing authorized content using the simplest human interfaces: voice + graphics (eye).

Budgets & Duration
The SAFIR project is supported by European Commission (FP6-IST-IP), with duration of 48 months and budget about 14M€.

Partners of the project

	Name	Country
	IBM	IBM (Belgium) coordinates for the project the participation of IBM Czech to provide speech technology and IBM Germany to provide know-how on STB/Residential Gateway.
	Voice Insight SA/NV	Voice-Insight (Belgium): uses the technology VQL and pushes it a step further by adding domains, translations, ontology’s, modes and user-adaptive-ness. It also plays a role as Project Coordinator.
	STMicroelectronics	STMicroelectronics (Belgium) provides smart-card related technology support for the potential SAFIR application requirements on special authentication together anonymous payment mechanism.
	Synergiums	Synergiums (Luxembourg): provides know-how of Ontology, especially in web services and e-Gov. application. It will work with VI to allow user to speak his own language using concepts and words.
	Geodan	Geodan Mobile Solutions (Netherlands) develops on its strong position in the public order and safety market to develop the SAFIR technology for the Police and emergency sector.
	Marathon Data Systems	Marathon Data System (Greece): provides GIS expertise and products, also develops pilot application using SAFIR technology for Greek GIS market.
	Walloon Region	Walloon Region (Belgium) provides and improves the InfraSport geodatabase as a support for databases quality research. This should permit vocal access to the information trough the e-Gov portals taking into account multilingual aspects and ontology.
	JRC Ispra	JRC Ispra (Italy) is responsible to define new methods to promote harmonized collection, handling, assessment and dissemination of spatial data, to set-up a European Spatial Data Infrastructure and to provide support to national civil protection activities, in particular for weather driven natural hazards.
	JPASS	JPASS (Belgium) contributes to the project their expertise in the domain EHS and participates the dissemination for “SAFIR for EHS”.
	CCI Vratsa	CCI Vratsa (Bulgaria) will be involved in developing a questionnaire regarding the Bulgarian perception on the e-government/e-work/e-business concept in the country and particularly in Vratsa region. It has to make a synthesis of the needs/opportunities evaluation in the above-mentioned fields of activities.
	NTB-AD	NBT AD (Bulgaria) participate in organization and coordination of the pilot partners selection process. It will perform technical and applicability research and describe the existing user applications, extract and specify the concrete needs, analyze with a view of pertinence, perform preliminary assessment of efficiency and benefits.
VDA	Vratsa District Administration	Vratsa District Administration (Bulgaria) provides local authorities with the necessary information concerning any ongoing and pending projects and realizes the international contacts on regional level.
	Ulearn2B	ULearn2B (Belgium) offers a global service including the design, development, and implementation of modular solutions for competence based learning using specially designed technological training methods.
	CIRB	CIRB (Belgium) puts his technical expertise in Telematics developpement and GIS into the SAFIR Project. The interest of the CIRB in the SAFIR project is to have new ways of completing the UrbIS towards voice interface to facilitate its use by the public agents.
	Twente University	Twente University (Netherlands) provides inputs of its academic knowledge about speech, language and dialogue technology and its academic network. It will try to lower the gap between industry and academia in the field of speech-enabled services.
	Thales Communications	Thales Communication (France) integrates vocal interface (SAFIR technology) in the systems of information and communication developed for the forces of civil safety. This innovation will offer to the users, as the fire brigades for example, an ergonomic and friendly access to the information they need.
	BASF-IT	BASF-IT (Germany) acts in the field of technology for supporting the MSDS concerns, a strategic safety issue for the European community, as well as an area of standardization needs.
	CAPINFO	CAPINFO (China) deploys the SAFIR project architecture and components to a typical e-Gov application in Beijing, especially develop a SAFIR pilot application Beijing city guide for Olympics 2008.

Status

The SAFIR project has successfully finished its first 24 months’ period for technology development and pilot application preparation. Now it is in its second phase for pilot application deployment and dissemination. See our executive Summary for M24.

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