The DRIVER+ Advanced Crisis Management Conference was held in Brussels on the 18th, 19th and 20th of February, bringing together over 300 Crisis Management specialists, academics and technology developers from throughout Europe and beyond.
The project’s outputs, achievements and long-term legacy benefits for all European and international Crisis Management organisations were praised by senior European Commission officials and conference delegates.
The conference was the culmination of several years of intense work across Europe, involving 4 large-scale crisis scenario trials and a final trial/demonstration, technology development and assessments, and the development of a unique Trial Guidance Methodology for testing the best solutions for specific emergency management tasks.
Research was also undertaken to accelerate innovation in Crisis Management throughout Europe, in particular in connection with climate change related-events such as wildfires and flooding as well as medical emergencies such as coronavirus and industrial accidents.
The project has also fostered the establishment of a number of Centres of Expertise to promote enhanced Crisis Management skills and innovation, and set up a pan-European network, the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) to foster knowledge sharing and cooperation.
DRIVER+ is an EU funded project tasked with promoting and testing new, science-based improvements in crisis management. Specialist speakers attended from world leading organisations, such as the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research on climate change and wildfires, the Red Cross on Psychological First Aid training for volunteers, and Patrick Meier of WeRobotics Flying Labs on the promotion of drone flying and mapping skills among local populations for improved crisis response throughout the non-European world.
The DRIVER+ Trial Guidance Methodology for conducting trials of Crisis Management solutions, is supported by the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI).
All outputs are free and open source, available from the DRIVER+ website. Other free outputs include the DRIVER+ Portfolio of Solutions – an online database of advanced Crisis Management technologies.
The establishment of a network of DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise to ensure the sustainability of project outputs has been a major achievement, with 7 Centres signing letters of agreement at the conference – Entente Valabre (France), the Main School of Fire Service (SGSP, Poland), L3CE (Lithuania), The Resilience Advisors Network (RAN, Ireland), SRC-PAS (Poland), EASS (Estonian Academy of Security Sciences), and the Austrian Red Cross (ARC).
For more information or to download reports and other project outputs go to: www.driver-project.eu www.driver-project.eu/final-conference
