The EU-funded H2020 project PROACTIVE led by the UIC Security Division has been very active since spring 2021 in reaching out to both practitioner and scientific communities by participating in a variety of conferences.
Starting with the CBRNE R&I conference held online on 18 May, PROACTIVE shared the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic and how we are applying these in the development of our upcoming mobile app for both practitioners and citizens. A key lesson learned from the pandemic is that crisis communication must be inclusive and accessible to all. Indeed, actions weren’t always taken from the beginning of the crisis to ensure that people with disability could access the lifesaving, crisis information they required. Good practices shared include PROACTIVE partner An Garda Síochána who published all Covid-19 related information materials in several languages and PROACTIVE Civil Society Advisory Board Member Union of the Blind Montenegro working with the government to create a text-to-speech compatible website.
Further, at the 18th ISCRAM conference (23-26 May), we explored the unique added value of a CBRNe mobile app. Such a tool could be helpful for citizens in the extraordinary circumstances in which characterise a CBRNe incident, such as decontamination and the challenges that come with it. Not only are the lessons learned from Covid-19 being applied, but the way in which the app is being co-developed with the project advisory boards was also laid out at this event.
How the PROACTIVE project outcomes can be adapted to the rail sector was the focus of the paper presented at the 7th Rail Human Factors conference held online on 23-25 June. The paper highlights a set of soft skills that railway staff need to develop should a CBRNe incident occur on the railway premises: understanding the specificities of this threat, public perception of the threat, trust in authorities and responders, response measures and protective health behaviours, and risk communication. Based on this, PROACTIVE will contribute to the development of a CBRNe training initiative aiming to help railway staff become a key element in the security chain during such major crises.
PROACTIVE will continue to be present at such scientific and practitioner gatherings going forward.
PROACTIVE can be followed on Twitter (@PROACTIVE_EU) as well as on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/proactive-eu/) and the project website https://proactive-h2020.eu/.
