After about four and a half years of dedicated work, the EU-funded PROACTIVE project, coordinated by the UIC Security Division, has recently come to an end. Focusing on the management of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and explosive (CBRNe) security incidents, PROACTIVE produced valuable results for security practitioners, including the rail sector, and civil society.
After a successful final review meeting with the European Commission in October 2023, all deliverables have now been accepted. The public ones are available on the project website.
The PROACTIVE Final Brochure highlights the main project achievements and key results such as evidence-based core recommendations, a crisis communication system, pre-incident public information materials, an aide memoire for training exercises involving vulnerable groups, and a policy making toolkit. These resources could help railways improve their CBRNe threat preparedness and enhance the security of both their passengers and staff.
While the project may be over, the UIC Security Division continues to promote the key results to ensure their uptake in various end-user communities.
UIC Senior Security Research Advisor Laura Petersen attended the EU funded project INTREPID Final Conference on 26 October in Brussels. She discussed the key role co-creation plays in building trust between first responders, citizens and new technologies. She also attended the NEEDS Conference on 31 October to 2 November in Enschede, the Netherlands, where she presented during the session on community engagement on “involving the public at large, including vulnerable groups, in field training exercises: the PROACTIVE approach.”
UIC Senior Security Research Advisor and PROACTIVE Project Coordinator Grigore Havarneanu was invited by the Société Française de Médecine de Catastrophe (SFMC – French Emergency Medical Responders Society) to give a presentation on 7 November in Paris, France focusing on the main challenges regarding crisis communication with the public. He highlighted the 5 key recommendations from the PROACTIVE & COVINFORM white paper and the lessons learned on communication from the PROACTIVE exercises.
On 16 November, during a work visit in the Hague, the Netherlands, he also had the opportunity to put the PROACTIVE final results into the hands of practitioners working at the headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and EUROPOL.
Lastly, on 4 December, he was in Brussels at the Community of European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) conference, on the panel “Involving citizens in CBRN research and capacity-building initiatives.” This was an excellent opportunity to highlight the final PROACTIVE outcomes and to convey how the project’s core values contribute to disaster resilient societies.
The UIC Security Division will continue to use the PROACTIVE results to further the understanding of CBRNe risks and threats to passenger rail and metro sectors. Indeed, PROACTIVE results have already helped to inform strategies to better prepare railway stakeholders against CBRNe threats through better cooperation with security practitioners. These principles are currently being applied in the new EU co-funded project IMPRESS, also led by the UIC Security Division.
The PROACTIVE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 832981.
PROACTIVE can be followed on:
X (formerly Twitter): @PROACTIVE_EU
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proactive-eu/
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@PROACTIVE_EU
The web: https://proactive-h2020.eu/
