Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Reaching out (demonstRation of EU effective lArge sCale tHreat and crIsis maNaGement OUTside the EU)
Reporting period: 2018-10-01 to 2019-11-30
A fruitful and collaborative environment involving different stakeholders was initiated through contacts between the beneficiaries and the different actors (end users, policymakers, SMEs and industry etc.). The work was conceived for interaction and outputs to be in continuous evolution throughout all the phases of the project. A set of first results took shape already in the first phase of the Project.
Development of the new tools to be included in the platform was under way at the time of suspension, as well as work on the identification of existing tools which might fruitfully be included for interaction with the system.
Research on public standards and interoperability protocols was initiated and under way at the time of suspension.
Organizational work and scenario development were made in the framework of WPs 6, 7 and 8 in particular by the demo leaders. Demo organizers engaged in work with third parties. UNS in particular entered contractual agreements with third parties identified for the Asian Demo described in WP8 for the climate extremes and disaster demo in Asia and held high level contacts with public bodies in those countries. MDA setup the regional platform with the regional partners, agreed on the objectives of the pilot and work distribution, contacted the respective Civil Protection authorities to obtain their support together with other external partners (UN OCHA, EU Embassies). The administrative framework needed for the transfer of funding to the regional partners was set up. The general concept of the pilot as developed by the task leader was discussed with the regional partners and respective authorities.
The UCL team involved in the WP6 Ebola crisis demonstration, planned in Guinea (Conakry), kept in touch with the local actors, primarily the Ministry of Health and was already collaborating with stakeholders for practical demo arrangements (e.g. local Guinean authorities for support, logistics, and ethics) as well as with the European stakeholders who expressed interest in the demonstration (i.e. DG DEVCO, DG ECHO, and EEAS).
A meeting was organized to present and explain the relevance of the project Reaching Out to a representative of DG ECHO in order to ease the mutual understanding of complementarities and connections between the objectives of the demonstrations outside the EU and the mechanism of response to crisis developed by DG ECHO (e.g. European union Civil Protection Mechanisms; European Emergency Response Capacity including the European Medical Corps and voluntary pool). One of the goals was to assess the potential implication of DG ECHO in the demonstrations abroad.
International cooperation was developed in the framework of the relapse of the demo outcomes on EU policy (in particular with DG ECHO) and with local authorities in the demo countries.
These elements are included in the implementation of the project. At the time of suspension no elements were yet available for benchmarking.
The framework of the project at large promoted a strong focus on citizens and society through the engagement of stakeholders representing a wide range of sectors (end users, policymakers, NGOs, local authorities and groups) enhancing also the potential of international cooperation.
Initial activity was undertaken through interaction with DG ECHO and with relevant stakeholders.
The consortium, at the time of suspension, was planning to widen the access to the Catalogue to external parties for the scope of enhancing European presence on the market.
At the time of suspension, the state of this objective was too early for actual implementation.