This paper deals with the cooperative strategies, which can be adopted in emergency scenarios by integrating space and terrestrial segments, and communication and localization services. First, the cooperative solutions for integrated Navigation and Communication systems are reviewed and an effective software‐defined radio implementation is described. Then, cooperative systems for broadcast and multicast communications in Incident Area Network are proposed and evaluated: in the broadcast scenario, low‐complexity relaying techniques are adopted to overcome the propagation impairments and the performance degradation; in the multicast system, radio resources management techniques for group communications are designed to allow the efficient use of scarce resources and improve connectivity and reliability of the overall system. The technical solutions have been studied and tested in the framework of the Italian National Research Project SAtellite‐assisted LocalIzation and Communication system for Emergency services [1]. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.