The project is inserted within the perspective of integrating the shortage of disaster-response capacity at the European level in the field of post-earthquake structural evaluation. The main objective is the development and implementation of a new Civil Protection Module able to ensure a rapid and effective response in the field of the post-earthquake damage and safety assessment targeted to enhance the European Rapid Response Capability (ERRC) within the European Community Mechanism for civil protection.
The European rapid response capability is based on the development of civil protection modules of the Member States, which are self-sufficient task and needs driven services. Each MODULE is an autonomous operational team representing a combination of human and material means, described by specific tasks, capacities, components, self-sufficiency and deployment, possibly interoperable with other modules, according to the Decision 2008/73/EC, Euratom (december 2007), which defines general requirements for European Civil Protection modules.
Each member state can implement a Module and made it available to the Mechanism. Currently there are 17 registered Module typologies plus one special Technical Assistance and Support Tem (TAST).
Following the recently identified quantitative gaps related to the earthquake emergency in the current state of the Mechanism (ECORIS, ENV.G.1/FRA/2006/0073), the project DRHOUSE (Development of Rapid Highly-specialized Operative Units for Structural Evaluation) aims at integrating the shortage of disaster-response capacity at the EU level in the field of post-earthquake structural evaluation. The project propose the development and implementation of a new “capacity” for the Mechanism, as a new “module for the post-disaster structural evaluation”. The module name is BUILDSAFE.
The project coordinator is the Italian Department of Civil Protection, with partners the EUCENTRE Foundation and the Italian Department of Fire Brigades, Public Rescue and Civil Defence.
