Emergency Response Planning: Efficiency through Standardisation

Nowadays, emergency response planning across the E.U. is regulated by national legislation and internal organizational procedures of the involved public services. Although the relative plans and procedures have several commonalities, they are not fully aligned, affecting interoperability in multiple ways. In cross-border crises, approaches may cause confusion or conflict among co-responsible first responders and civil protection agencies, introducing a significant overhead in terms of interoperability. Notably, in the case of large-scale crises, when numerous organizations need to be involved and cooperate, or in the case of cross-border incidents where international cooperation is required, lack of standardization may jeopardize the efficiency and effectiveness of the operations and sub-optimize the use of the resources. Acknowledging the above, the envisaged CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) on “Structuring an emergency response plan for crisis management stakeholders“ aims to reach an agreement with regards to a basis concerning the generic structure and content of the response plans whereby response provisions of the various stakeholders will fit in a homogenous synthesis with a positive impact on the underlying decision-making. Being an iterative process, elaborating the specific CWA leverages endusers expertise and is gradually validated through table-top and full-scale exercises towards achieving its objectives.