Civil Protection has always placed the protection of territories, communities and assets at the centre of its activities. In this context, the Civil Protection Division plays a fundamental role, both as a coordinator and as a partner or financier of numerous projects in various European countries. The European Union, on the other hand, provides the necessary resources for such initiatives through the Structural Funds and Community programmes, including the important EU Civil Protection Mechanism.
But what are the current objectives and the most advanced projects on which Europe is concentrating its efforts?
The projects supported by the EU Civil Protection Mechanism aim to help Member States, as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine, to achieve 3 objectives:
Prevention and mitigation of the consequences of disasters caused by natural and man-made hazards, acts of terrorism, technological, radiological and environmental accidents.
Improvement of co-operation and co-ordination between Civil Protection and other stakeholders through the development of specific risk management skills.
Increasing communities' awareness of the risks they face and how they can reduce their vulnerability.
Among the most innovative initiatives promoted in the European context are:
Proculther-Net (Protecting Cultural Heritage from the Consequences of Disasters-Network) is a project funded by the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. Its aim is to improve the protection of cultural heritage in emergency situations. To this end, Proculther-Net aims to create an extended community of experts from the academic, scientific and humanitarian world to address the impact of disasters on cultural heritage. The experts have been involved in the development of guidelines and protocols, as well as in training and education activities to support Civil Protection actors in emergency situations.
i-TRIER, part of the iProcureSecurity project, is carried out by an international consortium (Italy, Greece, Turkey, France), in which Beta 80 Group is one of the main participants, and focuses on the innovation of triage systems to support the management of a maxi-emergency. The objective is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency medical services and Civil Protection agencies in decision-making, management and response to major emergencies related to natural disasters or man-made accidents by supporting the development of an innovative, modular and highly flexible triage management system. The peculiarity of the project is the funding mechanism, a kind of elimination hackathon in 3 phases: design, prototyping and testing. The mechanism involves private individuals submitting innovative ideas, of which only the 10 best will be selected and funded to develop the proposal. The best 4 proposals will be allowed to implement a prototype.
Water4All, Water Security for the Planet is a 7-year partnership starting in 2022, co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 Europe programme. It aims to ensure large-scale, long-term water security to tackle climate change, contribute to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and boost EU competitiveness and growth. Water4All brings together a large and cohesive group of 81 partners from 31 countries in the European Union and beyond.
TeamAware is a project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme, to be completed by 2024. The consortium, consisting of 24 private and public organisations from 13 different countries, is developing a situational awareness system for first responders, integrated with an advanced sensor network and artificial intelligence algorithms. The aim is to improve crisis management, flexibility and responsiveness of first responders to emergencies. Specifically, TeamAware is responding to this challenge by offering a cloud-managed incident management platform that will make it possible to locate rescuers in real time, access information from various sources (social media, IoT sensors on portable systems and vehicles, cameras, drones), activate emergency procedures and inform citizens directly through early warning protocols.
TEMA (Trusted Extremely Precise Mapping and Prediction for Emergency Management) foresees the creation and management of an innovative platform, enabled by artificial intelligence and augmented reality, useful for predicting emergency situations caused by extreme natural phenomena and disasters, based on the study of real events. This platform will enable Civil Protection operators to understand complex disaster management phenomena and evaluate alternative response strategies. The aim is to improve the management of major emergencies in Europe by providing a state-of-the-art disaster management support system that can dynamically exploit multiple data sources and technologies. The Tema project, which will run until 2026, already involves 20 partners and is aimed primarily at Civil Protection agencies and first responders.
In conclusion, Civil Protection is a key pillar in ensuring the protection of entire communities and territories. In particular, the listed projects play an essential role in optimising the European response to emergencies and in promoting the development of research in this field.