An INtegrated next generation PREParedness programme for improving effective inter-organisational response capacity in complex environments of disasters and causes of crises

European countries confront the rising specter of transboundary crises, which cross national borders as well as policy boundaries,  with speed and ease, threatening the continuing functioning of critical infrastructures and the well-being of many citizens. Transboundary crises pose a specific set of complex challenges for which Europe is – despite recent policy initiatives – still ill prepared.

IN-PREP has recognized and will address three challenges in the context of transboundary crises:

1. Member states need to develop shared response planning.
2. Countries need to share information in real time. This sense-making challenge requires a way to have multiple countries and agencies create a shared picture of an emerging crisis based on multiple sources.
3. Countries need to coordinate the use of critical resources to ensure a timely response and to avoid waste and misspending.

To accomplishing above principal challenges, IN-PREP will establish and demonstrate a next generation programme by enabling:  1) a reference implementation framework of coordination operations (Handbook of Operations) and 2) a novel multi-disciplinary training platform (Mixed Reality Preparedness Platform) at the service of the entirety of civil protection stakeholders (firefighting units, medical emergency services, police forces, civil protection units, control command centers, assessment experts). The proposed framework will not only improve preparedness, response planning and scenario building but can be also applied during joint interventions, thus improving the joint capacity to respond. Moreover, the IN-PREP training programme is constructed around a rich set of Exercises and Demonstrations representative of high risk threats, disasters and causes of crisis that the European Civil Protection Community has faced and most importantly still needs to be better prepared on.

Addressing a complex and controversial subject, the IN-PREP unfolds several policy, organisational, scientific, technical and technological elements that come together to build the integrated vision of the IN-PREP next generation training programme to integrate novel tools for response planning and scenario building and thus optimise EU response capacity and resilience for large scale disasters and complex causes of crises. IN-PREP Consortium comprises of 20 partners and covers a large portion of Europe (7 Member States) amongst which 7 public bodies, including fire brigades, medical services, law enforcement, civil protection and command and control centers.

ICCS is the Action Coordinator of the IN-PREP and is leading the Work-Package on “Consortium Management & Innovation Development”. Another role for ICCS is on managing the Action risks and implementing an appropriate mitigation strategy.  Moreover, ICCS will steer and realise micro-projects during Action implementation for liaising with external parties (addressing the technical and user domains) to integrate their tools with IN-PREP Training Platform.  From the technical side, ICCS will design and develop the IN-PREP Communication Module that will govern the entirety of communication interfaces among interworking systems (C2, IS, SA) of the MRPP and will contribute to the overall system integration.