Decision-making activities along the whole DRM cycle, comprising prevention, preparedness, crisis and emergency management, as well as recovery, are often the response to similar situations that need to be faced in different contexts. Prior knowledge of past positive experiences may facilitate strategic and complex decisions; however, there is a need for a common and shared understanding of the different cases that may occur and of the solutions already identified by others and successfully adopted. Those solutions may represent Good Practices (GPs) that decision-makers can refer to, when making their choices.
The characterisation of DRM cycle situations and the identification of possible solutions can only be based on sound scientific and academic knowledge. Therefore, not only the civil protection decision-makers are relevant, but also the scientific/academic community that holds the know-how in this field. Hence, closer interactions towards a common understanding and sharing of knowledge between the two communities is needed.
The ROADMAP project (n.: 101017776 – UCPM-2020-KN-AG) contributed to establish a ‘Doctrine on disaster risk and crisis management’, intended as a shared understanding of disaster management between decision-makers and scientific actors.
The approach adopted in ROADMAP and the strategy designed contributed to build a shared general vision of the DRM and at the same time it focused on very practical solutions and ideas coming from the whole community involved in the process. However, such a process is quite complex and needs time and guidance in order not to miss the target of making the doctrine more comprehensive, useful, usable and used. To this end, several further steps need to be taken, so that the collaborative process developed within the project can concretely take a way ahead.
With this goal, the “EuRopean ObservAtory on Disaster risk and crisis MAnagement good Practices: way ahead”, ROADMAP2 project, aims at further developing and implementing the methodological approach and tools designed in ROADMAP.
The activities and results of the project will be organised to achieve two main objectives:
- Obj1 “Establishing a Community for the European Observatory (CEO) of good practices, to improve the knowledge, understanding and replicability of GPs in DRM”;
- Obj2 “Knowledge building and sharing through a cycle of seminars & collaborative workshops based on good practices and their application in thematic multi-risk scenarios”.
By achieving the aforementioned objectives, the project will contribute to the overall objective of the call of establishing a multidisciplinary thematic community that will support principally the Science Pillar of the Knowledge Network and, in addition, to contribute, through seminars/workshops/test exercises, to capacity development and sharing of knowledge and expertise in civil protection and disaster management. Inspired by the organization of the Italian Major Risks Commission, which provides scientific advice to the National Civil Protection Department, the community will be organised through a multi-panel scheme. This will allow different risks to be covered and, at the same time, the exchanges and interactions in multi-risk perspective to be stimulated, with the common goal to build a shared knowledge and understanding, to finally facilitate the sharing of experiences, GPs and solutions for future re-use by the DRM community.
