Volatile events such as disasters bring the prospect of rapid contagion and the threat of disastrous impacts for Europe. Vulnerabilities and cascading effects can result in significant injuries, illness and loss of life. Damage to health infrastructure, demand for medical attention, displacement and major outbreaks all place a strain on Health Services. Preparedness and response capabilities of Health Services will directly impact society’s ability to ‘bounce back’ to become more resilient to such devastating shocks.S-HELP will enhance the protection of public health and common grounds for interoperability by significantly ad-vancing the existing knowledge base required for the development of next generation Decision Support (DS) tools and a user-centred Decision Support System (DSS) for better Preparedness, rapid Response and coordinated Re-covery in emergency situations.It will offer evidence-based solutions to improve Health Services performance in emergency management, develop-ing a holistic framework to guide stakeholder needs analysis, and integrating an advanced DS tool-set. The project will execute multi-scenario based end user training, alongside ‘what-if’ analysis. It will simulate 3 multi-factorial and multi-agency scenarios (a chemical explosion; mass flooding; regional bio-hazard), and model the situational and projected evolution of the 3 emergencies to communicate coordinated and collaborative problem solving across agencies. S-HELP will manage end-user knowledge and validate performance in order to use project DS tools and solutions effectively in preparing for, responding to and recovering from an incident. S-HELP will disseminate and exploit the DS tools and solution to complement the role of Health Services in emergency situations.S-HELP will significantly advance the current state-of-the-art in decision support for Health Services, benefitting from an end-user driven consortium with leading health research, technolog and commercial experts.