TAK

Project description

Het TAK-project onderzoekt hoe operationele bewustzijnsvorming gerealiseerd kan worden binnen een stedelijke omgeving met behulp van het Team Awareness Kit (TAK) systeem. Veiligheidsdiensten missen op dit moment een centraal overzicht van voertuigen, personen en vliegtuigen tijdens operaties, wat samenwerking en besluitvorming bemoeilijkt.

Context

The TAK project takes place within the domain of public safety and emergency services. Safety authorities such as police, search dog units, helicopter crews and volunteer search teams often lack a shared, real-time overview during operational activities like search and rescue missions. This makes coordination and decision-making slower and more difficult.

The Team Awareness Kit (TAK) is a system originally developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory that enables location data sharing and tactical map visualization across multiple devices and users. Because the client did not want to rely on American software, the assignment was to investigate how a similar system could be built and deployed independently.

Results

The most important outcome of this project is a working Proof of Concept of a TAK-based situational awareness system, demonstrated through a realistic search and rescue scenario set in Eindhoven. The PoC shows how emergency services can share real-time GPS locations, search zones and clue markers on a central tactical map.

Throughout the project, the team investigated and tested multiple TAK platforms and tools, including iTAK (iOS), WinTAK (Windows), ATAK (Android) and a self-hosted TAK Server. Additionally, AI-supported tools such as Antigravity and Lovable were explored for rapid prototyping of tactical map visualizations.

After comparing all platforms on factors such as functionality, ease of use, stability and suitability for operational deployment, the conclusion was that ATAK is the most suitable platform for this use case. ATAK offers the most complete feature set, supports the widest range of plugins, and is best aligned with real-world emergency services applications.