AFTERSTRIKE

💎 Idea

The problem: In modern conflicts, many civilian deaths come from the consequences of strikes, not only from the strikes themselves. A missile hits a dam and floods towns downstream. A strike on a chemical plant releases a toxic cloud. A burning fuel depot sends toxic smoke over a city. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in June 2023 showed how little warning people downstream can get.

Those same strikes often take down the mobile network, which is the main channel for public alerts (Cell Broadcast, RO-Alert). Adversaries can also spread fake alerts to cause panic. So civilians often get warned late, never, or by the wrong message.

Our solution, AFTERSTRIKE, is an end-to-end chain from strike → secondary disaster → prediction → satellite alert → evacuation:

1. Detect: we continuously monitor critical infrastructure (dams, chemical plants, energy sites) with Copernicus data and automatically flag sudden changes such as a breached dam, spreading water or a toxic plume.
2. Predict: within minutes we compute the affected area and the time until impact: flood propagation over the terrain, or plume dispersion with the wind. The output is a time-based evacuation map (zone A in 40 min, zone B in 2 h).
3. Warn: the alert is formatted for the Galileo Emergency Warning Satellite Service (EWSS), which delivers messages by satellite straight to Galileo-enabled phones, even when mobile networks are down. Every alert is cryptographically signed, so fake alerts can be spotted.
4. Evacuate: the phone shows an offline evacuation route out of the danger zone, using Galileo positioning, with no internet needed.

The result is a command dashboard for civil protection authorities and a citizen app that keeps working when everything else has failed.

🛰️ EU space technologies

• Copernicus Sentinel-1 (SAR radar): sees through clouds, smoke and darkness, which is what you need during an attack. We use change detection to spot dam breaches, flooding and structural damage.
• Copernicus Sentinel-2 (optical): high-resolution confirmation of the damage and of the flood extent.
• Copernicus Sentinel-5P / CAMS: detection and tracking of smoke and toxic gas plumes after strikes on industrial sites.
• Copernicus DEM: terrain model used to predict where and how fast floodwater will spread.
• Copernicus Emergency Management Service: reference maps and validation against real historical events.
• Galileo EWSS: an alert channel independent of terrestrial and mobile networks, so warnings still reach people when cell towers are destroyed.
• Galileo positioning and OSNMA: precise positioning for offline evacuation routes, plus signal authentication, so devices can trust their position even in areas with GNSS spoofing.

Value: Copernicus tells us what happened and what will happen next, and Galileo makes sure the warning reaches people and guides them to safety, even when the ground infrastructure has failed.

🕊️ EU Space for Peace and Resilience

Main challenge: #2, Space-enabled crisis response and civil resilience. AFTERSTRIKE maps conflict damage with Copernicus Earth observation, builds evacuation routes for people with Galileo, and protects civilians when infrastructure is attacked.

It also addresses challenge #1 (Cybersecurity for space-based strategic enablers): signed alerts and Galileo OSNMA authentication protect the warning chain against spoofing and disinformation.

How it builds resilience: AFTERSTRIKE cuts the time between an attack and the moment civilians are warned from hours to minutes. It removes the dependency on vulnerable ground networks and gives authorities one trusted operational picture. It’s designed for Europe’s eastern flank (Danube dams, industrial sites near conflict zones) and for any region exposed to hybrid threats.

👥 Team

• Ramon Agud: Full-Stack Developer
• Ștefan Chiliban: Frontend Developer & Tester