Steria, a leading provider of IT-enabled business services, has today announced that West Yorkshire Police will use its SteriaSTORM Command and Control solution during ‘Le Grand Départ' on 5th July. This is the first time ever that the Tour de France will start in Yorkshire, in the UK. ‘Le Grand Départ' will attract a worldwide TV audience of over 3 billion and during the UK leg of the race alone, over 3 million cycling fans are expected to line up along the route.

Key to the success of this truly global event is public safety. The police and other emergency services will be under pressure to ensure that any unexpected incidents are dealt with quickly and effectively, to avoid danger to spectators and cyclists.

With such a vast crowd at the event, combined with expert but finite resources, ‘Le Grand Départ' presents a challenge to the emergency services. Police officers and vehicles will need to be deployed with maximum efficiency, to ensure any incidents are quickly dealt with, and that two-way communication with the control room shapes resource deployment effectively.

SteriaSTORM will enable emergency control room operators to deploy police officers with the right skills and equipment to an incident as quickly and effectively as possible - and then arm them with the information they need to deal with it effectively when they get there.

Combined with a Geographic Information System (GIS), SteriaSTORM overlays realtime information about the location of police vehicles or officers on detailed maps of the area.  This then enables emergency services control room operators to make rapid decisions and deploy resources where they are required for ‘Le Grand Départ' as it makes its way through the West Yorkshire region and into South and North Yorkshire too.

With the help of SteriaSTORM West Yorkshire Police will be able to track the progress of the race, from the front-runners to the back-markers, in order to know when it is safe to re-open roads, for example, or to assess the risk of an incident spilling out onto the race route at a critical moment.

Chris Bates, Managing Director of Defence and Emergency Services at Steria, commented, "SteriaSTORM will enable police resources to be deployed quickly and effectively during Le Grand Départ. This will ensure the emergency services have the best intelligence to protect the safety of spectators and the competitors alike."

SteriaSTORM  will help police forces in West, South and North Yorkshire collaborate effectively, and, as well as ensuring that they don't double up on manpower which may well be needed for routine police business, it will help them to work with the Tour de France race organisers to ensure that Le Grand Départ is Un Grand Succès.