Final Report Summary - DRIVER+ (DRiving InnoVation in crisis management for European Resilience)
Executive Summary:
Current and future challenges, due to increasingly severe consequences of natural disasters and terrorist threats, require the development and uptake of innovative solutions that are addressing the operational needs of practitioners dealing with Crisis Management. DRIVER+ (Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience) is an FP7 Crisis Management demonstration project aiming at improving the way capability development and innovation management is tackled. DRIVER+ has three main objectives:
1. Develop a pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development:
1.1 Develop a common guidance methodology and tool, supporting Trials and the gathering of lessons learnt.
1.2 Develop an infrastructure to create relevant environments, for enabling the trialling of new solutions and to explore and share Crisis Management capabilities.
1.3 Run Trials in order to assess the value of solutions addressing specific needs using guidance and infrastructure.
1.4 Ensure the sustainability of the pan-European Test-bed.
2. Develop a well-balanced comprehensive Portfolio of Crisis Management Solutions:
2.1 Facilitate the usage of the Portfolio of Solutions.
2.2 Ensure the sustainability of the Portfolio of Solutions.
3. Facilitate a shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe:
3.1 Establish a common background.
3.2 Cooperate with external partners in joint Trials.
3.3 Disseminate project results.
In order to achieve these objectives, five Subprojects (SPs) have been established. SP91 Project Management is devoted to consortium level project management, and it is also in charge of the alignment of DRIVER+ with external initiatives on Crisis Management for the benefit of DRIVER+ and its stakeholders. In DRIVER+, all activities related to Societal Impact Assessment are part of SP91 as well. SP92 Test-bed will deliver a guidance methodology and guidance tool supporting the design, conduct and analysis of Trials and will develop a reference implementation of the Test-bed. It will also create the scenario simulation capability to support execution of the Trials. SP93 Solutions will deliver the Portfolio of Solutions which is a database driven web site that documents all the available DRIVER+ solutions, as well as solutions from external organisations. Adapting solutions to fit the needs addressed in Trials will be done in SP93. SP94 Trials will organize four series of Trials as well as the Final Demo (FD). SP95 Impact, Engagement and Sustainability, is in charge of communication and dissemination, and also addresses issues related to improving sustainability, market aspects of solutions, and standardisation.
The DRIVER+ Trials and the Final Demonstration will benefit from the DRIVER+ Test-bed, providing the technological infrastructure, the necessary supporting methodology and adequate support tools to prepare, conduct and evaluate the Trials. All results from the Trials will be stored and made available in the Portfolio of Solutions, being a central platform to present innovative solutions from consortium partners and third parties, and to share experiences and best practices with respect to their application. In order to enhance the current European cooperation framework within the Crisis Management domain and to facilitate a shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe, DRIVER+ will carry out a wide range of activities. Most important will be to build and structure a dedicated Community of Practice in Crisis Management, thereby connecting and fostering the exchange of lessons learnt and best practices between Crisis Management practitioners as well as technological solution providers.
Project Context and Objectives:
Crisis Management (CM) is an ever evolving challenge. Hazards change, both for natural and man-made reasons – climate change being a well-known example of the latter. Vulnerabilities change, for reasons ranging from the establishment of settlements in new areas to societal evolution affecting people’s ability to cope with crises. Interconnectedness changes because of increased connectivity in the technical domain, for example the power transmission system, and in the socio-cultural domain as cross-border communities become increasingly important. All these societal, technical and environmental changes interact to create new challenges for Crisis Management. These evolving challenges are not compensated by traditional challenges becoming obsolete. Instead, as societies become more complex, both the increasing scope and unpredictability of potential crises, and the rapid dynamics of the incidents to be managed demand crisis management of an ever higher level of complexity. This does not necessarily mean that the frequency of crises increases, but unless innovation is up to the challenge of producing solutions, which fully exploit modularity, flexibility and adaptivity; then either the cost of capability development or the costs due to inadequate management of crises will grow.
On the other hand, it is a necessary starting point of CM innovation to realise that the European Crisis Management capabilities are already a mature and competent System of Systems – here interpreted as a federation of heterogeneous and loosely coupled local, regional and national systems able to collaborate in varying configurations and with varying levels of interoperability. Radical change to these capabilities would be very costly and likely incur unacceptable loss of CM capability during a long transition phase.
For the reasons outlined above DRIVER+ is not about wholesale redesign of CM capabilities. Instead it is about the simultaneous launch of an ability to adapt European CM to future demands as they emerge by means of a distributed European Test-bed for CM capability development of virtually connected exercise facilities and crisis labs where users, providers, researchers, policy makers and citizens jointly and iteratively can progress on new approaches or solutions to emerging issues, and of a well-balanced comprehensive portfolio of CM solutions (here taken also to include tools, operational concepts, and approaches). This portfolio should supplement the valuable European CM legacy in a cost-effective manner with regard to current and foreseeable challenges, and it should be innovative by exploiting RTD work done not least in FP7 and FP6 projects.
The Test-bed and the portfolio are the two main dimensions of DRIVER+ –and they also constitute two of the three main S&T objectives, which make up DRIVER+’s mission, the third being a more shared understanding of Crisis Management (CM) across Europe. These three objectives support each other: the Test-bed will be used to test, select and develop the portfolio of tools, and conversely this concrete work is also necessary for developing and validating the testbed. Both the work towards the portfolio of tools and its well-balanced result requires intense interaction by DRIVER+ with CM stakeholders and is, therefore, also likely to create more shared understanding among these stakeholders across Europe. Further, this shared understanding is a prerequisite for adoption of the tools of the DRIVER+ portfolio in Member States (which, however, should not be expected to be wholesale since different countries and regions will still have different needs). Finally, this shared understanding will strengthen the long-term sustainability of the Test-bed, and ultimately enhance European CM capabilities. Additionally, developing exploitation goals far beyond the project's horizon will be an implicit aim.
The first objective of the DRIVER+ project was to facilitate the capability development of practitioner organisations in the field of disaster risk management. To do this you need to have a very good method for conducting Trials: how do you define your gaps and how do you address these in a proper and sound way? We have developed a methodology, the Trial Guidance Methodology, for that, to support practitioner organisations, as well as the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure to create realistic environments for testing out new solutions, for bridging these gaps. So, developing a pan-European Test-bed was one of the main objectives of the DRIVER+ project.
Furthermore, with objective two we developed the Portfolio of Solutions. The main reason for developing this was to help practitioner organisations identify which capability gaps they have, and how they want to bridge them, and how to look for and access the required solutions. You may not know what solutions are available outside your organisation, let alone what solutions are emerging from research projects. Therefore, we have created the Portfolio of Solutions that can help you identify the available solutions that might be of interest for you. The great strength of the Portfolio of Solutions is that it not only contains information from the solution providers but it also contains experiences from peers. Users are not having to rely only on what the providers are claiming their solutions can do. Many of the solutions have been tested in Trials. We have populated the Portfolio of Solutions with solutions that we have tested during our Trials, so actually meeting the requirements of our practitioners in the project. But the Portfolio of Solutions is of course open to any other solution, even though they may not have been tested in the project, but which can provide some information on experiences and results.
The third objective related to creating and facilitating a shared understanding in Crisis Management throughout Europe, and we have done that in various ways. We have our I4CM (Innovation for Crisis Management) events, which are crisis management conferences, interactive workshops and marketplaces. We also have our PRDR’s, the Policy Research Dialogue Roundtables, where we are specifically focusing on the connection between policymakers and research. And we are also inviting many external researchers, practitioners and policymakers to our Trials so that we can share with them, show them what the products are that we are testing and developing and what the results are. We are making them part of that, explicitly asking for their feedback during these events, as observers for instance. That way they get a far better understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, and what the benefits are for them applying these products as well.
In addition, we are working on standardisation activities, not so much on developing the standards themselves as that takes quite some time, but we have started a CEN workshop agreement, so we are preparing the ground for a formal standardisation process. The outcomes of a workshop agreement are pretty close to a real standard. Standards, of course, help with a real understanding of what users and solutions providers are talking about; in the fields of terminology and definitions, in the field of Crisis Management, for the Trial Guidance Methodology, the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure, and information management. You can see information on this on the CMINE section of the DRIVER+ website where we have a specific taskgroup on standardisation.
CMINE (the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe) offers a platform for shared understanding in Crisis Management, to generate and exchange new ideas, and to share experiences in many different fields in Crisis Management. For us, of course, it is initially related to the DRIVER+ products, the Trials that we have developed, but it is a virtual platform where everybody can meet and exchange information.
We have about 30 different partners in the consortium coming from practitioner organisations and emergency services, research and technology organisations, universities, industries and small enterprises, and NGO’s. These are spread all over Europe, with a large number of participant countries.
We are really developing the tools and the methods that can be used by practitioner organisations themselves for their capability development and innovation management. We are working on a common methodology to address capability development in a structured manner, leading to recommendations and follow-up research questions in a very systematic way, leading to recommendations supporting the implementation of new solutions. It facilitates sharing your experiences, so that you can easily share your lessons learned with other organisations, and you know that the results that come out of the Trials are valid.
It is tempting for researchers to write a very extensive, scientifically oriented approach in isolation, but what we did was put practitioners at the heart of the methodology, trying to look through the eyes of practitioner organisations; how they think, what kinds of words and language they use in the real world. And we needed to think how to make this methodology understandable for practitioners, so that they can apply it themselves.
You need many other disciplines as well, innovation management, capability development, a multi-disciplinary approach, but we were putting the practitioners at the centre, and it was quite a moment when we could say: ‘It’s working, it’s being appreciated’. And we have seen many external organisations looking at the Trial Guidance Methodology for the first time, trying to work with it, they are very enthusiastic.
It went through quite a few iterations. So, while developing the methodology, we were already applying it. During the development and execution, and the evaluation of the Trials, we came up with an initial version of the Trial Guidance Methodology based on experiences during the whole Trial process. We tried out different working forms, different steps, it was a continuous and iterative development of the methodology, both within each Trial but also between all of the Trials. Likewise, the development of the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure also followed this iterative approach.
We did this initially with the DRIVER+ consortium partners, plus we recruited industries and practitioner organisations to have this multi perspective. Later on, in fact quite soon, we also involved other external people not directly involved in the project, making them a part of the development as well, explaining what we were doing, explicitly seeking feedback. They came up with recommendations as well.
A good example is the solutions providers. We have not only made use of the solutions from our internal DRIVER+ consortium partners but have brought in external ones as well to fill gaps identified by the practitioners. By having these external participants within the team they became a real part of the team, they were really co-designing the Trials together with us, how their solutions could best be tested and how the methodology could best be applied.
In the Trials the leading developers were some of the main participants, heavily involved in retrieving the feedback and implementing it. What we did was create a really open atmosphere, and that was critical in many aspects of the project, creating a really safe environment for receiving feedback. That is how we communicated between all of the teams working on this.
If something went wrong, for whatever reason, we recognised this and took it into account. We were trying to discover how the Trials worked best, and sometimes these were not easy moments. People put in a lot of effort, they were very dedicated, and the feedback may have been - ‘This didn’t work’ - and sometimes this was not comfortable. But it was always well taken by everybody, always in a very constructive atmosphere, and that really helped in improving the methodology and the Test-bed Technical infrastructure.
We all see the urgency of climate change and in connection with this project it was a very valid choice of focus that was made. Floods and wildfires are both very relevant for the European context, earthquake to a lesser extent, although in some countries this threat is very relevant. Industrial accidents such as chemical spills are also highly important. Overall, the types of risks we were dealing with in the project are all relevant. But actually it doesn’t matter which kind of crisis or risk you are looking at. We are of the opinion that the approach that we have followed is so robust and structured that it can also be applied to other types of disasters and risks. So, for a mass gathering event or a riot, which are completely different in terms of actors etc, if you look at identifying the gaps and the questions that you want to answer, how to test solutions, how to select solutions, and how to structure your evaluation, the method and the approach we have developed can also be transferred and applied.
All tools and products that we have developed are open source, openly available for everybody to use and adapt if necessary. We are in the process of establishing Centres of Expertise that will maintain the quality and the application of the main products and outputs coming out of the DRIVER+ project, so that future adopters and users can be supported in a very structured way. What we hope to achieve is that the further development of these products will then be safeguarded as well. Once the project has ended there will be other experiences from other stakeholders and other users, and that may lead to new modifications or alterations. And we want users and Centres of Expertise to exchange experiences among each other, to align and harmonise approaches and methodologies, although local differences could still be possible. That is also why we have the CMINE, to offer a platform for exchanging knowledge, lessons learned and experiences, and for facilitating a harmonised approach, for sharing the knowledge.
Project Results:
1. Introduction
DRIVER+ aimed at improving the way capability development and innovation management are tackled, by assessing and validating (in realistic environments) solutions that are addressing the operational needs of Crisis Management practitioners. In order to achieve this, DRIVER+ has worked towards three main objectives:
- Develop a pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development.
- Develop a well-balanced comprehensive portfolio of Crisis Management solutions.
- Facilitate a shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe.
These three objectives support each other. The Test-bed is used to trial, adjust and develop CM solutions. These solutions, including the experiences and Trial results, are included in the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS). The PoS can be consulted to find and select already available solutions to be trialled. Conducting Trials to test out solutions addressing the practitioners’ gaps requires an intense interaction by all stakeholders: CM practitioners, solution providers, policy-makers, researchers and citizen representatives. This interaction is structured and facilitated by the main components of the Test-bed, namely the Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM) and the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI). Furthermore, this interaction is supported by the shared overview of solutions in the PoS. Using both the Test-bed and the PoS contributes to the shared understanding in CM. This shared understanding is reinforced by CMINE, the online platform on which all stakeholders can discuss about gaps and needs, Trials and solutions, share experiences and lessons learned, and generate new ideas. By inviting non-DRIVER+ stakeholders to the various events (Trials, I4CM, PRDR, Final Demonstration, Final Conference, workshops, CWA activities), information about the DRIVER+ results is disseminated throughout Europe leading to increased willingness to adopt the outcomes; in addition, by explicitly asking for feedback on the Test-bed and the PoS, the quality of these products has continuously increased, resulting in better addressing the project objectives. Finally, the shared understanding has strengthened the long-term sustainability of the Test-bed, the PoS and CMINE, with high potential for enhancing European CM capabilities.
For each of the objectives, the DRIVER+ project has delivered the following set of concrete outcomes:
A pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development
The DRIVER+ Test-bed comprises the following main components:
- Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM)
- Trial Guidance Tool (TGT)
- Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI)
- Societal Impact Assessment Framework
- Training Module (TM)
A well-balanced comprehensive portfolio of Crisis Management solutions
The DRIVER+ Portfolio of Solutions comprises the following main components:
- Portfolio of Solutions (PoS):
- Lessons Learned Library (L3):
A shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe
The shared understanding in Crisis Management across Europe has been enhanced by the development of a variety of outcomes:
- Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE)
- DRIVER+ Terminology
- CEN Workshop Agreements (CWA) and New Work Item Proposal
In addition, a pan-European network of Centres of Expertise (CoE) has been established, and the CoE toolkit has been developed to support organisations in becoming a CoE.
- Pan-European Centre of Expertise and CoE toolkit
These results will be described in more detail below.
2. A pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development
The DRIVER+ Test-bed comprises the following main components, which are described in more detail below: Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM), Trial Guidance Tool (TGT), Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI), Societal Impact Assessment Framework, and the Training Module.
2.1 Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM)
Crisis management (CM) organisations often face difficulties in assessing the potential impact of a change in their sociotechnical setup for several reasons, for instance the lack of adequate methodological know-how to assess innovative solutions. Investments in new, but inappropriate sociotechnical solutions, not only produce significant costs, but also have negative impacts for the operational performance of response organisations. Changes may be brought about by different types of solutions, such as new software or new training or workflow processes, each adopted with the aim to improve certain functions or activities. For example, the use of an app for managing volunteers (compared to legacy systems and procedures) can be assessed in a trial on the basis of key performance indicators.
Assessing the impact of any kind of change is not a trivial task, as it points to both capability development and to the identification of innovation. This is why we need trials. Trials are of interest for people dealing with research and innovation who would like to test some new solutions, for practitioners in the field who have identified a problem in daily operations and are motivated to initiate the process of assessing solutions, for experts working in coordination centres who consider to participate in trial-like activities, and allows solution providers to collect user feedback in order to improve their solutions.
A trial has an objective and needs to be structured. It also implies a co-creative approach and an open mind. Workshops and tools are essential, as several iterations (especially for preparation) are usually needed. Trials are evolving processes: they grow “in the making”, like a handcrafted artefact. Time should be devoted to adjust the design. Key decisions must be taken in agreement with different stakeholders that need to be identified. The success of a trial then clearly depends on its design: a robust design will lead you to find appropriate answers to your needs. This trial guidance methodology provides step-by-step guidelines, a list of roles and responsibilities, tools and methods to perform a trial through a clear, structured and co-creative approach.
The Trial Guidance Methodology has been applied in all DRIVER+ Trials and the Final Demonstration. The final version in the form of a Handbook (https://tgm.ercis.org/) is the result of a long journey which started well before the first Trial.
The “soil” in which the methodology has grown until final maturity has been at the same time rich and arduous. It is worth considering that the Handbook is the result of a long process that started with the lessons learned from experiments carried out in the former DRIVER project. Back then, the starting point was the Concept Development & Experimentation (CD&E) approach. Some significant elements of this approach have been retained and adapted and the term “Trial” was considered more appropriate in the context of DRIVER+.
The CD&E was adjusted from DRIVER experiments to DRIVER+ Trials, especially – but not only – because of the settings in which Trials are carried out (not laboratory-like settings). The dynamic nature of practitioners’ realities is key and it is “embedded” in the Trial design: gaps are identified by practitioners and included in realistic scenarios in which promising solutions are trialled. The positivistic approach was abandoned in favour of a more practitioner-oriented approach to capture the impact of trialled solutions on the actual Crisis Management (CM) performance.
Not only was the CD&E adjusted, but a solid base for Trials was ensured through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that highlighted the need to develop a mixed-research methodology and a structured step-by-step guidance to assess innovations. These three sources of knowledge, the CD&E the knowledge base coming from the state of the art (SotA) and the past DRIVER experiences, were the pillars on which the design of the TGM was based.
The shift from DRIVER to DRIVER+ was the preparatory soil to conceive the methodological approach. During the preparation phase of the first Trial, there were no hands-on experiences to rely on, except for the supporting activities necessary to ensure a robust Trial design and for the Trial-like activities described in the literature. This was the moment in which the TGM was an in its embryonic phase: the efforts were mainly put in developing the strong foundations mentioned above, than in communicating contents in a user-friendly way.
After the first Trial, two aspects became clear: 1. the amount of support needed to apply the TGM was consistent and necessary in all phases, and 2. the format used was not appropriate. The TGM team decided to go beyond the DRIVER+ deliverable-template between Trial 1 and Trial 2 but it was only after the latter, that it was possible to re-think and re-work the methodology. Re-working did not entail coming up with a brand new approach. Instead, it entailed “connecting the dots”: the TGM was the glue of the pan-European Test-bed puzzle and it should have been explained and understood in that context. Many questions emerging from Trial Committee members were key in this regard: methods, tools and examples should have been described in a less fragmented way and lessons learned from Trials should have been reflected more explicitly in the output.
This is the moment in which the Handbook came into play. The requests from the Trial committee members were loud and clear: a CM practitioner-friendly format was unavoidable at this stage. The first version of the Handbook was released in December 2018 and entailed an amount of effort which was only partly foreseen by the TGM team. Releasing guidelines implies making content-driven choices while having in mind a design that facilitates the understanding of key messages. In light of this challenge, the TGM was basically re-written. The anatomy remained, up to a certain extent, the same but the structural organisation needed a new nervous system to transmit information in the “right” way: what, when how and why. To fine-tune the output, the TGM team decided to adopt “small iteration cycles” which consisted in monthly improvements of the Handbook. This resulted in the release of intermediate 10 versions (from December 2018 to October 2019).
Some of the versions implied only small changes (for instance, including an example or improving checklists), others implied major adjustments (new design or new descriptions of the technical tools of the Test-bed). To keep track of revisions and needs for improvements, the TGM developers used a ticketing system in a collaboration tool (Trello) that proved to be beneficial to prioritize revision items. The benefits of this approach were two-fold:
- Comments and suggestions from internal partners were included as revision items to be addressed in each monthly version. In doing so, DRIVER+ partners contributed directly to the refinement of the output and had a ready-made, improved Handbook every month.
- An inclusive and holistic approach was ensured. The process of developing a mature output entails a great amount of flexibility and willingness to take steps back and even detours, if necessary.
While the first three versions of the Handbook were shared only among consortium partners, from the fourth version on (March 2019), the Handbook was made available on the website. This turned to be very helpful as it facilitated dissemination and at same time enabled to collect feedback “in the making”.
Discussing the methodology with non-project partners was key to grasp the strength and pitfalls. Actively seeking for feedback was crucial to assess expectations and reflect upon the applicability of the TGM well beyond DRIVER+ Trials. Notwithstanding a certain degree of maturity of an overall methodological approach that was trialled together with potentially innovative solutions, the final version of the Handbook is a starting point to assess in a robust way potential “game changers” in the field of crisis management.
The TGM has been considered as important to strengthen the capabilities of CM organisations since it is grounded in the practitioners’ realities and it is as much pragmatic as possible and as much comprehensive as necessary to allow for a robust evaluation of socio-technical solutions.
2.2 Trial Guidance Tool (TGT)
The Trial Guidance Tool (TGT) is a web-based software tool developed to support trial owners and high-level crisis managers in the implementation of the TGM through the trial phases (https://pos.driver-project.eu/en/gt/trial). It is derived directly from the TGM and it assures that the practitioner’s needs together with trial objectives, are met by following the six steps defined in the preparation phase. The TGT allows also the validation of each steps’ outcome, ensuring that they are followed as intended. Given the fact that TGM by its nature is a complex subject, effective and successful implementation requires systematic guidance that the tool provides.
The TGT is also a knowledge database containing the results of the DRIVER+ systematic literature research (SLR) as well as lessons learned from the previous trials used for future reference. The tool evolves and improves during the course of the project, and it aims to become the ultimate support tool in all trial phases for future generations of crisis managers.
The TGT aims to simplify the identification of operational (real life) crisis management problems by offering a list of pre-defined gaps stored in the database that can be reused, or it gives support for defining new ones. Each gap is related to CM functions which are also a part of solution descriptions, stored in the Portfolio of Solutions, allowing integration between the tools.
The TGT gives examples of trial objectives and helps the users in defining them. The tool offers examples of “do’s” and “don’ts” gained from experience in the past, and it helps with formulating structured and pragmatic data collection plans for evaluating trial results by providing ad hoc templates. It also allows users to formulate trial scenarios and stores them in the tool for future reference.
The search and matching function based on CM functions taxonomy, is designed to help identifying potential solutions from previously identified gaps to be adjusted in a trial. In addition, the tool introduces test cases which can be defined and shared across trials, to help CM practitioners in fulfilling trial objectives and answering research questions. Trial owners, together with their teams, can use the tool simultaneously to improve their collaboration.
The TGT also stores lessons learned from each trial, which can be accessed to foster common understanding of crisis management across Europe. A pdf export function is one of the core functionalities that the tool provides, which allows data to be extracted from the TGT directly to the trial action plan. Integrated help will accompany the user on each step and will provide support and examples for what needs to be done. In the long term, the TGT aims to allow systematic and guided procedures to assess potentially innovating solutions.
2.3 Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI)
In a trial, one or more innovative solutions are used by the participants and assessed in the context of a simulated crisis. For a useful assessment, the test-bed offers several tools for support and a common information space to share messages between solutions, and with legacy systems. Additionally, multiple simulators can be connected to create a realistic, yet fictive incident environment.
Besides using it for trials, the same technical infrastructure and tooling can also be used in day-to-day CM practice for training, exercises and assessments of personnel and organisation in a realistic, yet fictitious controlled context.
All components are available on github.com/DRIVER-EU as open source software (MIT license), but can also be obtained from the docker hub. This means the components can be easily downloaded, installed, used and adapted free of charge.
To facilitate the execution of trials, the infrastructure has the following functionalities and interfaces available to the trial staff (i.e. trial owner, evaluation coordinator, technical coordinator, observers and assisting technicians) to prepare and execute the trial:
- The technical infrastructure allows for connecting solutions and legacy systems alike, such that they can share messages with each other inside the common information space (CIS). For instance, a drone can provide imagery or the location of victims and share them via the CIS with a common operational picture application.
- The technical infrastructure also allows to simulators to be connected together, such that they can simulate an incident and feed the simulated incident to the solutions and legacy systems. This is done by using the common simulation space (CSS) and the CIS-CSS gateways. For example, a flooding simulator can share the simulated flooding in the CIS, so the traffic simulator will not route traffic in that area. Via the CIS-CSS gateway, the simulated flood map is provided to the common operational picture application, so they will not dispatch ambulances to that area. The CIS and CSS are both using the open source publish-subscribe streaming platform, Apache.
- In the trial management tool (TMT), several scenarios can be created to assess specific aspects of the trialled solutions. Scenarios consists of multiple storylines and so-called injects, i.e. messages that can either trigger an action in a simulator, a solution, or in a role-player. During execution of the trial, the trial staff uses the TMT to keep track on activation of these storylines and injects.
- In the observer support tool (OST), observer checklists and questionnaires can be created and used by observers and participants during the execution of a trial. Furthermore, the TMT can trigger new checklists and questionnaires. All answers are subsequently shared with the after-action-review tool
- The after-action-review tool (AAR) logs all checklists and questionnaires as well as all messages flowing though the CIS and CSS. This data is stored and made available for evaluation.
The open source nature of the components and the developer documentation provided with it, make it easy for software developers to deploy these components, connect solutions and simulators to the infrastructure and create a fictive crisis scenario and observation templates. For administrators, the infrastructure also offers an admin tool to configure the infrastructure, turn on security, and an extra set of developer tools for the implementation and testing of the trial specific set-up of the technical infrastructure.
2.3.1 Common Information Space (CIS)
The Common Information Space (CIS) is used to facilitate data exchange between solutions (i.e. software tools) in a transparent and reliable way, in order to enhance the collaboration within and the effectiveness of crisis management while using these solutions. Currently used IT systems (i.e. legacy systems also present in the baseline) can also be connected to the CIS, such that these can feed data into solutions (e.g. a first dispatch report) or vice versa, and such that they can be fed with simulator input (e.g. simulated ambulance positions).
Connecting to the CIS is done by using current emergency management data exchange standards, like Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messages, or Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) messages. This facilitates exchange of understandable information between different organizations, even if they use different data formats (syntactical interoperability) and different languages and/or taxonomies (semantic interoperability). Main benefit is that the systems connected to the CIS do not have to adapt to the data formats of other systems, yet can still exchange information with them. If a solution or legacy system is not yet using such data exchange standards, their data inputs or outputs first need to be transformed into common standard formats.
To link up the solutions and legacy systems with simulators, the CIS can be connected to the Common Simulation Space (CSS) via so called CIS-CSS Gateways. Data from the simulators is translated into data that can be understood by the solutions connected to the CIS and requests from the solutions can be relayed back to the simulators. Because they translate specific message types, there may be multiple gateways. These gateways have to be developed trial specific, converting common standard data formats used in the CIS to common simulation data formats used in the CSS. The CIS and CIS-CSS Gateways do not need to have their own visual user-interfaces, since they only convert messages.
Configuration of the CIS and monitoring of its functioning is done via the admin tool, which does provide a visual user-interface to the trial staff. One major aspect of the developed CIS concept is data protection and security, which is considered necessary in order to create trust among the integrated organisations and their systems. This will be achieved by a trusted registration process for all organisations and an encapsulation of all messages exchanged via the CIS.
2.3.2 Common Simulation Space (CSS)
The trial participants and the solutions and legacy systems connected to the common information space (CIS) typically require information from a fictitious crisis (e.g. number of resources present at a certain dispatch location, or the detailed information of victims at the incident scene). The Common Simulation Space (CSS) is the component within the test-bed technical infrastructure that provides a framework for simulators to jointly generate and maintain a simulation world needed for the solutions (and legacy systems) and the participants to get a sufficiently realistic impression of the fictitious crisis for them to manage.
Dependent on the trial scenario, simulators are to be selected, based on:
- Whether solutions or legacy systems need data from the simulated crisis, which they cannot get from other solutions or legacy systems (e.g. solution fed with a simulated flood status).
- Whether participants need extra information about the simulated crisis (e.g. eye-level view of the crisis, simulated by a virtual reality application or by staging this by physical items on a live-exercise terrain).
- Whether information in the scenario needs to be pre-calculated / pre-simulated for realism (e.g. a realistic wildfire progression).
The Common Simulation Space allows multiple simulators to focus on their part of maintaining the current state of the simulated world (i.e. the simulated truth of the incident and the world around it, for instance a flooding simulator keeping track of the progression of a flood through a region and a resource simulator keeping track of the positions of multiple ambulances). In order to communicate state changes with other simulators inside the CSS, self-created communication messages are allowed inside this space. This is different from the messages being sent over the CIS, because the CIS is more aligned with current emergency management data exchange standards.
To direct the simulated world towards a desired scenario relevant for the trial, the CSS is connected to the trial management tool, which can send out messages to change the simulated world i.e. injects directly processed by simulators. For example, to initiate the dike breach, let a container explode, or drive 10 ambulances to the incident scene, etc.
Simulators all have their own data model of how they represent the simulated world. The CSS allows these simulators to agree on a communication form that the simulators understand to create and maintain a jointly simulated world. In this way, a shared perceived truth is offered to the solutions, to be used in further emergency management decision making. However, due to an incorrect observation, miscommunication or a failing sensor/solution, the perceived truth can be different from the simulated truth. Filters to create a different perceived truth can be implemented in the CSS-CIS Gateways, restricting participants from getting the correct information out of a simulator. So whereas trial/exercise staff can see all information of in the simulators, participants may only be able to see part of that information or may deliberately receive incorrect information.
2.3.3 Trial Management Tool (TMT)
In order to assess solutions during a trial, one or more scenarios are created in the TMT by CM experts and trial staff. Each scenario controls the simulation time (start, stop, pause), and specifies what is happening during the trial, so the solutions can be properly evaluated, and the trial objectives are met. In a scenario, multiple storylines can be created, each containing one or more injects, i.e. messages to simulators, solutions and role-players.
During the trial execution, those messages influence the scenario. For example, the TMT can send a message to a traffic simulator to create an incident at a certain location, or it could send a common alerting protocol message to a command & control application. Additionally, the TMT can send messages to role-players, so they can make a call or play a non-participating command centre. The trial staff can also send messages earlier or later, or resend them, offering a great level of control over the trial.
Creating a scenario in the TMT can be compared by creating a new project. However, instead of managing a project by creating subprojects, work packages and tasks, a trial scenario (=> project) consists of storylines (=> subprojects), acts (=> work packages) and injects (=> tasks, like a simple message). And whereas in a project, you assign resources, in the TMT you assign simulators, role players and observers (=> resources).
A scenario is created while preparing the trial and is executed during the trial. And like a project manager, controlling the sequence of the tasks during the lifetime of a project, the trial staff is also able to control the sequence of inject/messages during the lifetime of a scenario. For example, a scenario may specify that initially water levels rise, next a dyke breaks and a flooding starts. In parallel, a traffic accident causes an ammonia cloud to threaten a part of the city. Its output is a time sequence of messages, for example to instruct a simulator to start a flooding, a role player to call 112 or an observer to watch out for a particular use of a solution.
2.3.4 After Action Review (AAR) tool
The AAR tool logs all messages exchanged between the solutions, legacy systems and simulators connected test-bed technical infrastructure and by components within the infrastructure (e.g. observations inputted via the observer support tool), with the purpose to enable a later analysis of the data exchanged during the trial. Apart from being used for a post-analysis, it is also used during a trial execution to monitor the amount and kind of data exchange, in order to check whether all data exchanges are correctly functioning, to check whether the correct data is exchanged at the correct moment during scenario execution and to check whether observations are being stored.
The detailed logging of all formats, sources and destinations, all marked with time-stamps, allows the technical staff to sort, filter and inspect the messages. The output of the message logging can be viewed on a list, on a timeline or as a sequence diagram. This enables several options for a visual analysis about which components have exchanged which data with each other.
2.3.5 Observer Support Tool (OST)
The observer support tool records all observations from the observers digitally, so they can be analysed during and after the trial. To collect feedback, the OST also provides the ability for participants and trial staff to fill in questionnaires, directly after (a part/episode of) the trial is executed.
The OST consists of a web application for the observers that is typically run from a tablet. The same application can also be accessed in a browser on a desktop computer, a laptop or a mobile device, for instance for participants to fill in the questionnaires and for the evaluation coordinator to prepare the trial specific observation templates (i.e. checklists) and questionnaires. Furthermore, a server is running to manage all checklists and questionnaires and record all answers. This server is connected to the trial-management-tool, such that the correct checklists/questionnaires are available at the applicable moments during execution of the trial. All collected observation and questionnaire data is thereafter shared with the after-action-review tool, such that it is centrally stored for evaluation.
The functionalities of the observer support tool within each phase are:
- Preparation phase: a) definition of trial episodes (i.e. parts of trial in which different phenomena are expected), b) definition of roles in the trial (e.g. observer in room A, participant type B), c) definition of the observation templates (i.e. checklists and questionnaires) which are composed of one or more questions, and d) assignment of observation templates to roles and to trial stages.
- Execution phase: a) definition of the data collection session during testing, dry runs or the trial, by creating user accounts and inviting the users, b) assignment of users to roles, c) supervision of the data collection process, d) changing the trial episode, manually or via the trial-management tool, e) sending currently applicable observation templates and messages to roles (i.e. users), and f) showing how many answers to observation templates are inputted by users and showing these answers.
- Evaluation phase: a) exporting the answers inputted in observation templates to CSV format, b) sharing these answers with the after-action-review tool, and c) reviewing these answers.
2.3.6 Admin tool and security
The admin tool is necessary to configure the Kafka layers of the CIS and CSS and the CIS-CSS gateways and to configure all adapters used by solutions, legacy system, simulators, trial management tool, observer support tool and after action review tool to connect to the CIS or CSS. When performing tests and during execution of a trial, the admin tool provides an interface to monitor whether all components are well connected, to specify the types of messages being used and to collect all errors and warnings. When all lights are green in the admin tool’s user-interface, all components are well connected.
Additionally, via the admin tool, you can secure the infrastructure, by creating certificates. These certificates will assure that only the certified solutions, systems, simulators and components can access only the for them applicable Kafka layers within the CIS and CSS. Adding of security certificates is especially important in case an online technical infrastructure is used, for example when assessing web-based solution, or when the IT-network of the hosting platform is vulnerable to external parties listening in to the trial.
The Admin tool provides pre-defined configuration defining a set of solutions, layers and gateways that can be selected. It also offers the possibility to enable/disable security for the testbed so that only authorized solutions can connect.
2.4 Societal Impact Assessment Framework
The need for innovative solutions to deal with crisis situations stems from the fact that crisis management as such is taking place in complex and dynamic societies. This complexity is caused by several factors, such as increased digitalisation and the growing movement of people across borders and countries. The emergence of new solutions to tackle new and complex challenges also means that the solutions we come up with can have consequences that are more complex than before. These consequences – or, in other words, the impact – can be positive and desired (such as increased efficiency), but there might also be impacts that are negative or unintended. When talking about societal impact in this context, we mean something different than how well the solutions work. A new solution to a challenge can be very efficient in producing the desired effects, but at the same time have tremendous negative impacts on the society of which it is part. For example, the aim of a SIA is not to assess whether a crowd-tasking solution would make response activities more time-efficient, but how a crowd-tasking solution can be deployed to foster a culture of trust in society so that communities feel safe when they are in a crisis situation.
The objective of doing a SIA is to ensure that the implementation of CM solutions maximises its benefits and minimises its burdens, especially those burdens borne by people. Burdens and benefits may not be directly measurable or quantifiable and are often hard to consider exactly for this reason. Nonetheless, they are important, and by identifying potential societal impacts in advance, in particular two advantages are evident:
- Better decisions can be made about which solutions should be employed, and how they should be employed.
- Mitigating actions can be implemented to minimise the harm and maximise the benefits from a specific solution.
In the larger societal context, by achieving these advantages, other benefits include positive impacts such as accountability and acceptability:
- Accountability means that CM participants are in various ways responsible for what they do and should be able to give a satisfactory justification for it.
- Acceptability of solutions, since crisis managers depend on the society accepting the CM solutions, especially if the solutions are participatory in the sense that they require interactions with the public.
Acceptability also relates to issues of sustainability, since solutions that are developed and implemented with the broader society in mind have a larger chance of avoiding controversy and being adopted, in addition to making the implementation more efficient and effective.
A SIA can be carried out in many different contexts, and for many different purposes, which makes it difficult to give a universal definition of what it entails. The starting point for the SIA Framework developed in the DRIVER+ project is that an assessment of what a certain solution does to a society, means thinking about how it impacts the people in it. While some categories of impact are easier to identify and mitigate than others, there is no easy checklist to identify potential societal issues. For example, privacy-related impacts might be easier to recognise due to high public attention of the topic and to the emergence of European-wide legislation. On the other hand, the impact of certain solutions on societal values addresses impacts that exceed calculability, not least because most of these impacts are long-term and often unintended.
While SIA can be challenging to do in everyday CM operations due to a lack of time and efforts, the TGM facilitates SIA as a natural step in preparing a trial. In order to understand the concept of SIA better, let’s use the example of trial Poland. This trial dealt with the following research question: How can cross-border resource management be supported through sociotechnical solutions during multi-stakeholder long-term rescue operations? In other words, which technologies and/or methodologies can provide an added value for rescue operations? When we evaluate a given solution, be it a new technology or a new methodology, we always need to step back and wonder if, together with the added value it may bring, there are also new problems that it generates. When setting up a trial, issues related to the societal impact of our activities occupy a central role. This is because we recognise that there is a mutual relationship between technical objects, the natural environment and social practice. The technologies do not operate in a vacuum; rather, they exist in a social context that is impacted by them in different ways.
Relevant steps to take for assessing societal impacts are:
A) Identify stakeholder groups/communities: the first step would be to identify the stakeholders and the community that could potentially be impacted by the implementation of the solution. Here, relevant questions to ask would start with “how could solution X with all its functionalities have an impact on the stakeholder groups or communities included in this context?”
B) Collect background information: if relevant, collect reference information covering key social issues of the impacted communities such as community history, culture and key events that have shaped the development of the community. Are there known vulnerabilities in the community? Specific social challenges? Who are the major industrial actors?
C) Get an overview of legislation and policies: provide an overview of relevant national/ EU legislation and policies that complement the mitigation measures (Step 5) that are directly related to the trial. For trial Poland, the maps generated by the drone can be viewed and analysed in the dedicated geoportal or any GIS environment already utilised by CM institutions. Yet the images that those maps were based upon may raise issues of privacy for individual people and their property; therefore, relevant legal or regulatory considerations would be for example data protection law or local airspace regulation for the use of drones. This step is important for making an assessment, and depending of the trial setup, it could even be relevant to contemplate whether CM activities might challenge other human rights (for example when dealing with vulnerable populations). The added value for CM generated by the maps cannot automatically overrule individual rights of other people.
D) Identify and predict impacts: This is the main part of the SIA, where a structured assessment, based on the information acquired in the previous steps takes place. The full aim is to identify potential direct social impacts and try to predict their significance, duration and extent. The SIA criteria listed in the framework should be used to structure this thinking, but the idea is not to say something about each and every criteria. In some cases the impacts may be rather obvious, and isolated maybe to issues of privacy and data protection, in which case only that one criteria might be relevant; yet, in other cases the societal issues might be more complex. In trial Poland, for example, we used both simulated tabletop and field exercises, which required the use of dedicated observers, who recorded and documented the actions. For evaluating this part of the trial, different data was collected, such as questionnaires filled in by the observers and practitioners. As an example of potential societal impact, the personal data emanating from these questionnaires could have implications for the ones involved, in the sense that if the identification of a firefighter or a practitioner is revealed, this can compromise the depth of their answers.
E) Describe mitigating measures and follow up: In order to reduce the risk of negative unintended impacts, and/or to increase the possibility for positive impact, a list of measures should be made. The list should be based on the impacts identified in the previous step and could include actions such as providing extra follow ups for volunteers, establishing rapport with local community leaders, engaging with the communities, and sharing more information about the activity/solution/trial. A plan should be made to describe how the mitigating measures will be followed up. For trial Poland for example, the anonymity of the participants in the trial was an issue; i.e. that the anonymity of an observer should be preserved to ensure independence. Therefore, specific measures regarding both informed consent and anonymity had to be put in place, so that this data collection could take place. A mitigating measure relevant for the issue of departing assumptions would include thorough deliberation regarding the scenario selection, and carefully defined research questions.
2.5 Training Module (TM)
The aim of the Training Module (TM) is to train and instruct all persons involved how they can best organize their own Trials (https://www.sisekaitse.ee/en/why-trial-guidance-methodology-and-training-module). This means that the TM should explain how to make best use of the pan-European DRIVER+ Test-bed:
- How to use the DRIVER+ Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM).
- How to use the supportive methods and tools.
- To make reference to the pan-European network of fellow Test-bed users and organizations that can deliver Test-bed support.
These topics are also described in the TGM Handbook. After reading the TGM Handbook and completion of the TM, learners should be able to prepare, execute and evaluate a high-quality Trial themselves, potentially but not necessarily with support from DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise (CoE). These Trials can be small-scale (e.g. only one type of socio-technical solution) or rather complex (e.g. assessing multiple solutions in a cross-border context).
The learning content is split in several sessions, which are each be divided again in sub-sessions. This division makes it possible to train each topic in an achievable time-frame, making it feasible for the target groups of learners to go through each topic (i.e. sub-session) step-by-step and spread over time (e.g. during free evenings at home or during some allocated hours at work). This division in sub-sessions is also useful as different types of persons involved in organization of a Trial will have different needs or topics they are most interested in.
Because the TM is aimed to support future Trial organizers and thus future Test-bed users (i.e. the TM’s learners), one can distinguish two main categories of training target groups for the TM. The TM’s primary training target group are Trial organisers, being, who could be employed as:
A) High-level crisis managers – as they have first-hand experience in encountering CM gaps directly, or to experience the cascading effects or lessons identified of these gaps. They also are in a strategic position to trigger a process to search for a solution for these gaps. Therefore they are the most logical spot to kick-start a project to organize a Trial. To be able to run this well, they should have a good understanding of the TGM and how to work best with it (in a team).
B) Senior CM field practitioners – as they have multiple years of experience working in the field and/or in command/coordination centres, they have first-hand experience in current CM gaps, especially at the operational level. As such they are foreseen to be a logical spot at which the concept of a Trial emerges (e.g. “We often experience issues A or B in these types of incidents: can’t we try out how to solve this best?”). Therefore, they should at minimal be able to participate as practitioner expert in the committee organizing a Trial or they even need to be able to use the TGM fully.
C) CM policy makers – because they are involved in the development of new policies, often requiring the implementation of new socio-technological solutions and requiring an assessment of new policies and solutions piloted/implemented. Therefore, they need to understand the concept of a Trial and be able to (manage a team to) follow the TGM.
D) CM procurement officers – because they could use the TGM as objective assessment method for new socio-technological solutions to acquire. Therefore, they need to understand the objective character of Trials and the TGM and how to apply this in their procurement processes.
E) CM innovators – usually working within a CM organisation, their job is to chase CM innovation. To assess the success of these innovations, all aspects of the Test-bed are most useful for them. To implement and use it well, they should have a full understanding of the Test-bed.
F) Researchers in the field of CM – as these are working on their independent research in CM and innovations to solve these, or because they can be involved by a CM organisation to assist them in innovation research. These persons can be found to work at (applied) universities and public research organisations. They should therefore have a full understanding especially of the TGM and supportive tools and methods. Because of their research background, they probably have or should be drawn to different focus areas within the TM.
G) Consultants in the field of CM – because they can be involved by a CM organisation to assist them in innovation assessment, for instance as data analyst, evaluation expert or as toolset implementer. These persons can be found to work at public research organisations, and commercial consultancy companies. Dependent on the expertise for which they are hired, they need to be able to use certain aspects of the Test-bed (e.g. to prepare and execute the evaluation approach, or to select and implement simulations required to run a realistic Trial scenario).
Next to this primary target group, there are also other stakeholders in a Trial, who are the TM’s secondary training target groups:
- Practitioners (not being the main Trial organizers) – because they are needed as players during the Trial runs and/or as observers. Therefore, they must understand what a Trial is and particularly what is expected from them to play or observe during a Trial run.
- Solution providers – because their solution is being trialled. They must have a good understanding of what a Trial is, have a basic understanding of the TGM, and must understand the process to prepare, execute and evaluate a Trial well such that they can cooperate effectively. In addition, this enables them to better provide suggestions on how to best assess the performance of their solution during a Trial.
- Developers and technicians (for any kind of socio-technical solution) – because they are needed to organize a Trial, they must have a basic understanding of what a Trial is and the TGM, and they must have in-depth understanding of what the Test-bed technical infrastructure can bring them, how to implement it and of the technical and logistical preparation processes. They can work for solution providers, but also for CM organisations hosting a Trial or research organisations.
Because of the heterogeneous training target groups and the different needs they each have, the TM uses a blended approach by combining e-learning and a contact-phase. Using a blended approach means that the TM will consist of both an e-learning phase, followed by a face-to-face (or potentially webinar) instructor-led contact-phase. The e-learning part is used to convey knowledge, create comprehension (i.e. learners not only knowing about a certain topic, but also able to explain it to others) and facilitate a basic level of analysis and synthesis capabilities via interactive assignments (for instance, the ability to select and detail out those CM gaps applicable to a Trial in the learner’s own CM organisation). The e-learning is mostly automatic with clear content based on the learner’s profile.
The TM provides skill-based learning in order to enhance transfer of learning, meaning that, after completion of the TM, learners can in principle organize a Trial themselves, independently or with support from experts. To develop these skills, not only knowledge-transfer is needed, but learners should also have the ability to practice these skills and critically reflect on their performance and even have their performance assessed by the expert instructors. Therefore, next to the e-learning, a contact-phase consisting of a collection of TGM-expert-led sessions is offered. Although this requires instructor manpower for every contact-phase course, this investment is deemed valuable as especially for the more complex methodological steps in the TGM, a face-to-face contact-phase is regarded as the best method for practice, reflection and assessment.
Learners should first complete those parts of the e-learning aimed at their future role (e.g. Trial organiser, evaluation consultant or solution developer). The succeeding contact-phase is set-up in a modular fashion, such that the modules applicable to a specific group of learners can be selected and tailored to fit the needs of this group best (e.g. for a group of new TGM experts at a Centre of Expertise/CoE, or a group of developers employed at several solution providers). This phase builds on the e-learning by providing more (group) assignments to improve the learner’s analysis and synthesis capabilities. For instance, this can be a multi-disciplinary group assignment to work out and critically reflect on research questions, in which a TGM expert facilitates this assignment and provides expert advice and feedback.
Based on the choice for a blended approach, the profiles of the training audiences and the contents of each sub-session, several training delivery methods are implemented.
For e-learning:
- Video – Short video clip, usually <10 min., fit for introducing a topic or providing an example in a very appealing method via 1-directional knowledge transfer.
- E-lecture – Video recording of a (real) lecture by one or two presenters, intended for explaining a topic in a basic up to very detailed level (i.e. 1-directional knowledge transfer).
- Presenter slides with voice-over – similar as e-lecture, but without a video capture of the presenter. Usually containing a scripted, professional voice-over.
- Video interviews – a scripted video of 5-30 minutes between interviewer and one or more persons being an expert or having first-hand experience in the topic to be trained. Often used to convey example cases via 1-directional knowledge and experience transfer.
- Explanimation – animated video providing a very appealing, concise explanation of a topic via 1-directional knowledge transfer.
- Tutorial videos – (screen capture) videos with voice-over for explaining how to use physical products and software applications and for providing a step-by-step guide to resolve issues with these (i.e. 1-directional practical ability-transfer).
- Checklists, user manuals and other written and visual documentation – providing written explanations (i.e. 1-directional knowledge transfer) and for providing reference to more advanced topics or to topics/tools/methods used less often.
- Quizzes and tests – come in the form of a single question up to a full list of questions to answer, thereby to check the level of knowledge or ability transfer. Providing direct, automatic feedback.
- H5P.org interactivity – this is a specific open source technology to create interactive questions, quizzes and tests. H5P.org technology can be implemented in YouTube, Moodle (i.e. open source e-learning platform also used by EASS) and Drupal (i.e. open-source content management system on which the TGT and PoS websites are based).
- Individual assignment – complex question/assignment than possible via a quiz, usually graded by an instructor (i.e. human-in-the-loop grading system).
- Take-home assignment – similar to individual assignments but intended for more complex tasks requiring a learner more than five minutes to complete. Instructors also need considerable time to grade the submitted answers/reports.
- Discussion forum – communication medium for sharing questions, answers, practical advices, submitted (take-home) assignment and feedback amongst learners and between learners and instructors.
- Achievements – awards granted to learners to mark progression in the e-learning, indicating level of knowledge and ability transfer and for motivating learners.
For the contact-phase:
- Presentation or lecture – similar to e-lectures provided via e-learning, but in this case with instructor being face-to-face with learners. In the core being 1-directional knowledge transfer.
- Question & answer session (Q&A) – a face-to-face session between learners and an instructor fit for providing tailored answers to questions that have arisen at learners.
- Checklists, manuals, leaflets and other documentation – completely similar to these types of documentation provided via e-learning.
- Individual assignment – similar to individual assignment provided via e-learning.
- Group assignment – fit for triggering joint (multi-disciplinary) work on an assignment. Especially good for topics into analysis and synthesis and for triggering joint discussions amongst several learners.
- Plenary discussion – fit for jointly – meaning both learners and instructor(s) – enriching the knowledge and ability transfer by posing questions or statements, followed by jointly discussing about the different aspects/answers to these.
- Test / Exam – similar to a test in the e-learning, but providing more time for learners to complete it and providing instructors to observe the learners during completion (e.g. observe group behaviour or monitor for improper passing strategies).
3. Portfolio of Solutions (PoS)
The Portfolio of Solutions (https://pos.driver-project.eu/en/PoS/solutions) is a web-based online platform that aims to document all relevant information regarding the solutions in the crisis management across Europe in such a way that different stakeholders can easily access this information. It also aims to standardise the language through the use of shared vocabulary of pre-defined taxonomies, so that for example, CM professionals, solution owners, CM practitioners and trial owners can work on the same level, and use the same terms, making the collaboration much easier. The trial guidance methodology describes a six step approach - an iterative process for trial preparation, where the last step includes selection of trial relevant solutions. The main role of the PoS in this step is to allow trial owners, and CM practitioners to select solutions that are going to be used and evaluated in the trial and that are related to the defined trial gaps, which are linked to CM functions. In other words, the PoS aims to help in the solution selection process, by offering the information on which CM functions are addressed by the solutions, so that they can be matched with the defined gaps.
Another important function of the PoS, is to propose a marketplace where providers can advertise their innovative solutions in the field of crisis management, and improve the chance of them being selected for a trial, or being used by CM practitioners. It also allows description of potential use cases, to give more insights on the actual use of the solutions.
The search functionality of the PoS enables an easy search through a large number of solutions, maintaining the high level of relevancy, by applying the correct filters that narrow the search results. A goal for the future is to make the PoS project independent, so that information about potential solutions for ongoing real-life crisis management problems is always available when needed.
The portfolio of solutions provides the possibility of describing a solution in a standardised way. The solution owner is able to state in which innovation stage the solution is currently in, what readiness level it has, which crisis cycle management phase is targeting, and which crisis size it covers. It also gives the opportunity to provide information on which standards are supported by the solution, and to upload and store all documentation regarding the solution, such as manuals, installation/ configuration guides etc. Solution providers can also describe use cases in which CM functions are addressed. Other than that, PoS allows references to be added to both internal DRIVER+ trials and external experiments, to give additional information on how the solution performed in real-life situations.
For the trial owners and CM practitioners, the PoS’s search function allows easy discovery of relevant solutions by filtering all information provided by the solution owner and by clearly stating which CM functions are being addressed. The solution overview page of the PoS is based on search API which implements deep search algorithms that allow searching through all components of the described solution for relevant terms, delivering fast, user-specified search and also gives the possibility to filter the solutions by CM functions, allowing easy matching with trial gaps. The PoS also implements a PDF export function to allows easy information extraction for further usage. This functionality can be combined with the filtering function that the tool offers to generate PDFs containing user-specified information, that being a description of a single solution, or for example, description of all solutions that address the same CM functions. Integrated help functionality is designed to help both solution owners in describing their solution in the best possible way and to help trial owners in selecting relevant solutions to be benchmarked in a trial.
Tutorials have been created to guide users while using the PoS website. These tutorials can be found at two different places. First, a tutorial webpage is available to all users at the following URL: https://pos.driver-project.eu/en/about/tutorials. This webpage contains all existing tutorials. Second, tutorials can also be found as a contextual help in several webpages where it was considered relevant for guiding the users. For example, the “solutions tutorial” can be found on the webpages displaying information about solutions. When creating or editing a tutorial, the webpages in which it will appear as a contextual help can be configured. Finally, most of the tutorials are interactive tutorials created with the H5P technology (https://h5p.org/) and more precisely with the “branching scenario” feature, which is included in the PoS administration platform. Contextual help is designed to assist the users to understand what they are expected to do, whereas the solution/Trial validation functions are designed to help them understand if their contributions are complete and self-consistent. This is particularly important for the Trials, which have complex data models and cross-referencing between parts of the Trial description.
The PoS is designed to minimize the quality assurance overhead on the site owners (administrators/editors), while maximizing the content quality. This is achieved in the following way. First, the site membership is limited to CM professionals and stakeholders. Each user must register with his or her full name and the company email and provide a short sentence explaining who they are. This information is manually double-checked by the site owner before enabling the user account and all the accounts where the user identity and affiliation cannot be established are rejected. Second, every solution that the user publishes on the PoS is linked with their user account as well as with their company profile. This is seen as a significant incentive for the users to behave professionally and publish high quality content. The third important part of the QA are email notifications. The following notifications have been implemented: a) Site editors will receive email notifications for newly published trials and solutions, b) Site editors will also receive email notifications when some user requests help or reports an issue by clicking on the “Helpdesk” button, c) Users will receive periodic notifications about validations errors, d) Users will also receive notifications about changes in “their” Trials and solutions, and e) Users will receive a request to update their contents after a period specified by the administrator.
The future goal of the PoS is to propose a marketplace where the next generations of CM practitioners will be able to find information related to solutions to fill the existing gaps in crisis management, and also to discover new innovative solutions provided by solution owners for arising problems.
4. Lessons Learned Library (L3)
The objective of the Lessons Learned Library (L3) is to support organisations in sharing, editing, and consulting lessons within the domain of crisis management (CM) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). L3 is especially intended to share lessons across organisations, across sectors, and across countries with the final goal to improve CM and DRR in Europe by learning from each other’s experiences (https://l3crisis.eu).
Lessons may be collected from various types of events: routine, every day operations, crisis situations, training and exercises, experiments and tests, but also from risk management studies or preventive activities. L3 offers a structured approach to develop and improve doctrines, organisations, training, equipment, leadership, personnel and facilities to achieve more effective, efficient and safe operations.
A lesson provides answers to questions such as: What was the situation? What was the impact? What went well in emergency management and is worthwhile to implement? But also: What went wrong, and which improvements are needed? To this purpose, any user can create new events and share their lessons with other emergency management communities in Europe. Since lessons are of varying nature, a filtering mechanism allows users to quickly find relevant information about an event that took place (e.g. a Trial in the DRIVER+ project), about certain types of incidents (e.g. forest fires or bomb attacks), or about specific crisis management functions (e.g. evacuation or situation assessment).
The main functionalities of the L3 are (a) to add and edit crisis events and associated lessons from these events, and (b) to find and consult specific events or lessons. Because the aim of the L3 is to share lessons across the CM community worldwide, the user interface is in English, and lessons are expected to be in English too (although this is not enforced). Since lessons need a context, all lessons belong to an event. Each event can contain one or more lessons, and each lesson is linked to one or more crisis management functions.
An event is described by a summary, including some general data such as type of event (e.g. an incident or an exercise), and its date and place. More detailed information on the incident scenario and CM operations, such as the initial incident and cascading effects, the (potential) impact, a map of the situation, involved organisations, and an overview of critical CM functions that had to be executed. Lessons that have been learned from the event.
A lesson consists of the applicable CM functions during the event, including a description of the perceived positive or negative experiences and their effectiveness. Solutions to improve the CM function based on experiences during the event, including a description of the expected performance improvement and an indication of the expected impact reduction. These lessons are typically captured during the evaluation phase of an event when all required information is available.
5. Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE)
The Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) is a community of practice whose objective is to foster innovation and enhance a shared understanding in the fields of crisis management and Disaster Risk Reduction in Europe (https://www.cmine.eu/). CMINE is creating an umbrella network of stakeholders active in crisis management by linking existing projects, networks and initiatives. By doing so, CMINE reduces fragmentation in the crisis management domain, prompts the generation of ideas and assists in the identification of innovative solutions to improve European resilience.
CMINE provides to its members an online and offline environment to actively engage with other crisis management professionals. It helps them to reflect on current and future challenges while facilitating the uptake of research and innovation by practitioner organisations. Different task groups have been set up to explore approaches to address issues in specific crisis management areas, namely floods, wildfires and volunteer management. The CMINE platform has been designed as a flexible tool, easy to update and inform through collaboration. Its aim is to become a sustainable pan-European platform in support to all professionals involved in crisis management.
The interfacing between the PoS and CMINE was established and is configured in a way that allows for the automatic transfer of solution descriptions from the PoS to CMINE. A prerequisite is the written consent that the solution provider needs to give when registering the solution on the PoS. When this consent is given the following information is transferred via a script written by AIT to the COCP CMINE page “Innovative CM solutions”:
- Name and logo of the solution.
- Name and location of the solution provider.
- Description of the solution.
- Weblink of the solution or solution provider.
- TRL.
In addition to the regular website, the CMINE App has been developed which provides a much easier and quicker access to the main features of the platform and can be downloaded via the Android and Apple Store.
In order to further strengthen the value proposition and therefore the sustainability potential of CMINE it has been decided to upgrade the contract with the platform provider to the “Enterprise package”. This upgrade addresses and reflects the needs of the network of networks that CMINE envisions extremely well. Members of CMINE can:
Create private groups with advanced features to work and exchange information: a) Designate their own admins and manage their group autonomously b) Provide their own port of entry through a customised public homepage, URL and sign-up form, c) Create subcommunities for different chapters or task groups, d) Encourage conversations through a live feed and discussion forums, and e) Store documents in a secure repository.
Raise their profile within the crisis management community: a) Announce news and project milestones, and b) Promote events and manage registrations.
Benefit from, and contribute to, a knowledge and innovation network: a) Join or create task groups that are relevant to your organisation, and b) Share and access best practices and lessons learned
6. DRIVER+ Terminology
In the frame of international research projects, a multitude of actors with different cultural, organizational, national and educational background come together in order to achieve one or more targets. Under such conditions it is essential to ensure a common understanding of the actors, as there is otherwise a high risk of failure in achieving the common goals. Lack of common understanding of centrally applied terms, such as "interoperability" or "information exchange platform" hampers the development of specific processes and consequently also any prototype implementing such a process. Additionally, the naming and defining of newly developed products of the project is needed in order to build a shared understanding of these outcomes. In this light, DRIVER+ decided to establish a project terminology of key terms and associated definitions in order to enhance a common understanding within the project team and to contribute to a shared understanding within the broader crisis and disaster management community within Europe.
A Terminology Working Group (TWG) was established dedicated to identifying central terms applied in the project and to provide suitable definitions for those terms. Relevant terms for the terminology were identified by approaching operative working groups within the project and asking to specify the most relevant terms applied in the documentation of their work. For these terms a systematic search for adequate definitions was executed.
As a starting point for a project terminology an existing terminology, such as UNISDR or ISO 22300 can be used as a basis. From there on the most relevant terms for the project and their definitions can be identified. The first step to establish a basis version of the project terminology is to identify the relevant terms of this initially available list. Next, a process of continuous update of the terminology has to be set up. In almost all cases when an update for specific terms was requested in DRIVER+, this resulted from an input of a project partner or a member of the TWG. The TWG forwarded the request to the Project Coordination Team (PCT), consisting of the project coordinator, the technical coordinator, the external cooperation manager and the quality manager and in case of acceptance of the request the TWG took the following actions:
A) The TWG examined if an adequate definition could be found in UNISDR 2015, ISO 22300 and the ISO database.
B) If one or more adequate definitions were found in these sources, all definitions were proposed to the PCT together with a recommendation for a selection.
C) If no adequate definition was found, other already available sources were examined without giving any ranking to the PCT in case of identification of adequate definitions. These sources were:
- SDSIE 2017: Service de défense, de sécurité et d’intelligence économique, Crisis & disaster management terminology translation.
- IFRC 1991: Code of conduct – International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
- ICRC 2013: Professional standards for Protection Work.
- HM Government 2013: Emergency Response and Recovery Non-statutory guidance accompanying the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
In case all examined sources did not provide any or adequate definitions, additional sources could be examined, or self-defined definitions could be taken. In general, recognized and well accepted definitions were given priority compared to self-defined DRIVER+ definitions. However, although sometimes available definitions were suited for the project purposes, an additional comment to the definition was deemed helpful in order to make the DRIVER+ context more specific. This was done by adding a so-called DRIVER+ note in addition to the definition.
On this basis the DRIVER+ terminology was continuously updated, published on the DRIVER+ public website and included in the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS). Whenever a term of the DRIVER+ terminology is used in the description of a solution, the PoS provides the corresponding definition from the DRIVER+ terminology via mouse over function. The DRIVER+ terminology aims to contribute to a shared understanding in Crisis Management and to be sustainable simultaneously. Therefore, it is also translated in eight languages, i.e. German French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Estonian and Swedish. The translations were done to further increase the mutual understanding. The chosen languages cover a large part of the European Community and help the DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise (CoE) in their activities to share experiences with regards to supporting the capability development and innovation management of European practitioner organisations.
In addition to the project terminology a list of acronyms and abbreviations used in DRIVER+ was established. The catalogue of acronyms and abbreviations was set up in order to foster achievement of a common understanding on names for systems, tools, institutions etc. in the project. Like a terminology a mutually agreed register of abbreviations and acronyms helps to achieve seamless communication in a project and to avoid possible misunderstandings on specific topics. The different lists of acronyms and abbreviations in each deliverable were used as input for the global list available to the project and beyond.
The DRIVER+ terminology consists of 147 published terms and 556 acronyms and abbreviations (July 2020). 17 of 147 definitions are extended by a DRIVER+ note. Most definitions were found in the standardisation documents via the ISO online browsing platform: 16 definitions come from ISO 22300:2018 Security and Resilience – Vocabulary, and 64 definitions from other standards. UNISDR was the source for 9 definitions. 34 definitions are initial DRIVER+ definitions, developed by the project and 24 terms were defined by different sources in the area of CM.
The terminology (terms, definitions) and the list of acronyms and abbreviations are published on the public project website (https://www.driver-project.eu/driver-project/terminology/).
7. CEN Workshop Agreements (CWA) and ISO New Work Item Proposal
With 31 European partners, European standardisation plays an important role in the DRIVER+ standardisation strategy. European standardisation is not only essential for setting new standards within the existing technical committees, furthermore, it provides a possibility for European research projects to transfer project results into a publicly available document called CEN/CENELEC Workshop Agreement. Within the overall project duration, four CEN Workshop Agreements were developed. All CWAs were developed in CEN Workshops in accordance with CEN/CENELEC Guide 29. All four CEN Workshop Agreements cover DRIVER+ identified needs for guidance and standardisation and use DRIVER+ results as a basis and can, therefore, be seen as sustainability tools for the project.
7.1 CEN/WS 100 - CEN Workshop Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM)
Crisis Management is a domain that is constantly confronted with changing environmental influences, varying goals, and partly unstructured processes. Especially in such a dynamically changing and thus challenging domain, it is difficult yet vitally important to continuously identify, assess and finally introduce new innovative solutions to support the decision-makers and operatives in practice. This CWA focuses on the establishment of a methodology to systematically assess such solutions for their applicability in practice. With it, practitioners will be enabled to objectively asses the added value of an innovative solution. It facilitates to improve the dialogue and cooperation between the solution providers and the practitioners that use them. Finally, the methodology will support practitioners in their choice of procurement of the right solutions to fulfil their tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible.
This CWA and the Trial Guidance Methodology introduced within is for CM practitioners. In particular, it is suitable for CM organisations that have identified capability gaps or possible improvement potentials within their processes, practices or procedures. Due to the costs needed to introduce new solutions, the specific requirements on required training, software and workflows as well as the consequently complex interactions between all elements of the socio-technical setup of a CM organization when implementing changed practices, providing specific guidance for the assessment of such solutions is highly beneficial for the affected CM practitioners. This was also realized by CM practitioners and researchers alike during a workshop to identify standardisation potentials at the DRIVER+ General Assembly on 5th September 2018 in Warsaw, which was the initial event starting the standardisation activities.
The scope of the CWA regards the definition of a methodology that enables a systematic and robust assessment of one or more socio-technical solutions (hardware, software, training, procedure, or a mix of those) within a realistic Crisis Management scenario. The target groups of the CWA are CM practitioners concerned with innovation or procurement, public authorities concerned with procurement (or writing tenders), as well as research and development departments in industry and research.
The Trial Guidance Methodology comprises three main phases: preparation, execution and evaluation. Each of these phases consists of a number of further steps, including detailed descriptions for the used processes and methodologies. Besides, the intended CWA comprises the relevant responsibilities to define clear roles of all participants in a solution Trial.
7.2 CEN/WS 099 - CEN Workshop on the Semantic and Syntactical Interoperability for Crisis and Disaster Management
Current and future challenges, due to increasingly severe consequences of natural disasters and terrorist threats, require the development and uptake of innovative solutions that are addressing the operational needs of practitioners dealing with crisis and disaster management. Interviews with more than 50 European crisis and disaster managers on past crisis and disasters revealed interoperability as predominant challenge in European disaster management (1). An electronic questionnaire was used to execute the interviews and the results of the inventory showed that in the majority of examined past disasters, requests of stakeholders were predominantly related to problems of information exchange both on a syntactical as well semantic level. Moreover, a large a diversity of applied solutions as well as standards and procedures was shown. In order to face this challenge of a diversity of solutions and procedures as well as lack of interoperability multiple European research projects, e.g. the DG ECHO project Alpdiris and the FP7 projects EPISECC (607078), SecInCoRe (607832), SECTOR (607821) and Redirnet (607768) as well as DRIVER+ (607798) developed platforms allowing to interface IT solutions from the involved actors (in the case of DRIVER+ the platform is called testbed and is a central infrastructure supporting the execution of Trials). Industrial and research partners both from DRIVER+ as well as external actors decided jointly to specify main recommendations for realizing both syntactical as well as semantic interoperability in the frame of this CWA 17513:2020.
CWA 17513:2020 overall defines recommendations to achieve organizational and cross border interoperability on syntactical and semantic level for crisis and disaster management. The document provides syntactical recommendations on the realization of tool connectors to a platform, standardized protocols, validation of transmitted messages, security issues, message distribution approaches and system resilience. Regarding semantic services recommendations on the establishment of semantic resources as well as the establishment of a semantic mapping and matching are given.
CWA 17513:2020 is dedicated to support both practitioners as well as solution providers in the process of the realization of interoperability between IT solutions designed for the application in the crisis and disaster management domain. Practitioners are people who are qualified or registered to practice a particular occupation in the field of security or civil protection, e.g. crisis managers and responders relating to all disciplines of crisis and disaster management and response. Solution providers are those that develop and supply technological solutions that fulfil the requirements defined in this document, with the goal to improve operational capabilities of practitioners.
In addition, use cases for the application of syntactical and semantic services are given. Layer models are described and examples of concepts and topologies are provided.
In the domain of crisis and disaster management there is an increasing request for organization and border crossing information exchange both on national as well as international level. This CEN Workshop Agreement is therefore dedicated to support both practitioners as well as solution providers in the process of the realization of interoperability between IT solutions designed for the application in the crisis and disaster management domain. The target groups of the document are civil protection authorities, local emergency management authorities (LEMA), fire brigades, police authorities, first responders (e.g. Red Cross, Knights of St. John), actors involved in cross-border operations, military forces involved in crisis and disaster management, critical infrastructure operating forces, companies involved in disaster management and civil protection, and the R&D community.
7.3 CEN/WS 101 - CEN WS Crisis management - Building a Common Simulation Space
Within the world of modelling and simulation, a tendency to provide isolated simulators that work within a very specific domain can be seen. Although this focus on specialized simulators allows increasing the effectiveness of modelling behaviour, as fine-grained as required, it also gives rise to the desire to interconnect multiple simulators together to provide a more generic use of these combined simulators. Interoperability refers to the ability of computerized systems to connect and communicate with one another readily, even if they were developed by widely different manufacturers in different industries.
CWA 17515:2020 defines a technical framework for connecting simulators and supporting tools aiming to facilitate interoperability between multiple stand-alone simulators, in order to jointly create and maintain a common simulation space. It specifies infrastructure and accompanied protocol parameters, common simulation message formats, and a set of services or tools facilitating the common simulation space functionalities. This document is intended to be used by system integrators and developers of individual simulators who jointly want to use an interoperability framework to share (parts of) their own simulation domain with simulators from another domain.
The aim for this CWA is to provide a solid foundation of architectural guidelines to be used for jointly configuring a common simulation space. This CWA does not have the aim to closely integrate connected applications together. The general vision is that simulators are created for one or more specific domain knowledge areas with their own granularity, boundaries and purposes. To closely integrate these simulators would mean to integrate these domains as well, most likely causing irredeemable conflicts in the individual granularities, boundaries and purposes. In order to maintain individuality of the simulators, a common simulation space provides a framework for communication, based on a minimum commonality of the data accepted and produced by the individual simulators and an event-driven design philosophy.
The document provides a set of protocols and associated message formats to facilitate elementary interaction processes for simulators to function inside a common simulation space. To provide a better understanding of the proposed guidelines, this CWA also provides a repository of example interactions between simulators connected to a common simulation space. These examples are not described to limit the use of this document but are carefully chosen to reflect the most common types of interaction simulators would be expected to encounter when using a common simulation space. Each use case consists of a brief description of its intention, accompanied with a scenario description to provide an example for this use case. Based on this scenario, the desired information exchange flow and the required guidelines, messages, infrastructure and services to implement this flow are defined. Please note that the scenarios used inside each use case can be easily translated to other topics or configurations that serve the same purpose of the use case.
7.4 CEN/WS TER-CDM - Terminologies in Crisis and Disaster Management
The CWA 17335 is addressing all actors of the national and international crisis and disaster management domain in order to improve mutual understanding in all phases of the crisis management cycle. The CWA offers approaches supporting improved semantic interoperability between IT solutions of different actors such as first responders, authorities and crisis managers.
The CWA can be applied in different fields of applications. Technical experts are often requested to support crisis management staff during a crisis. As disaster and crisis management is typically not part of their daily business, they can use the thesaurus in order to improve communication with the crisis management staff. Another area is the exchange of messages with annotations typically between IT solutions of practitioners. Both sender and receiver receive semantic information including similarities of definitions of key terms while exchanging information. An additional potential application is the collection of relevant documents for emergency planning. A search string might be typed into a search engine and a hint on semantically related is given. Search results can be enriched by semantic annotations. The CWA can also be used to support the development of new context specific terminologies as well as digital thesauri.
The central Austrian crisis and disaster management terminology is specified in the national standard S2304 “Integrated Disaster Management – Terms and Definitions”, procedures for the national crisis and disaster management are provided by the National Crisis and Disaster Management (SKKM) that is coordinated by the Austrian Ministry of Interior. In 2018 the committee K246 “Societal Security” of Austrian Standards started a new standardisation initiative with the purpose to specify a methodology for analysing and comparing of crisis and disaster related terms, their definitions as well as context. The new methodology is based on the procedures of the CWA 17335, aligned with the framing of the SKKM and cantered around the vocabulary of the S2304.
This CEN Workshop Agreement analyses definitions of terms used in crisis and disaster management as well as the scopes of the related source based on a set of indicators developed by the members of the CWA. Both scopes and definitions from different sources are compiled and compared regarding several aspects such as their context and envisaged audience. Sources could be a terminology standard or web services.
The focus is set in responses to large scale critical events. Small scale incidents managed by daily routine processes of stakeholders are also covered but are not the main focus of this CWA. Selected terminologies predominantly from the domains crisis and disaster management are used for the analysis and are included in the document. The CEN Workshop Agreement includes terminologies and taxonomies, but no ontologies.
7.5 ISO - New Work Item Proposal on Societal Impact Assessment (SIA)
During the initiation process of a CWA, European TCs need to be considered if the technical committee's scope covers the topic of the proposed CWA. When DRIVER+ proposed the Societal impact assessment framework to CEN/TC 391, as the responsible TC, feedback was received that led to the initiation of a preliminary work item on the international level within ISO/TC 292 Security and resilience. A preliminary work item is a document proposed to a TC as a proposal for starting the development on a new standard. A preliminary work item is a document proposed to a TC as a proposal for starting the development on a new standard.
The objective of doing a SIA is to ensure that the implementation of CM solutions maximises its benefits and minimises its burdens, especially those burdens borne by people. Burdens and benefits may not be measurable or quantifiable and are often hard to consider exactly for this reason. Nonetheless, they are important, and by identifying societal impacts in advance, in particular, two advantages are evident: a) Better decisions can be made about which solutions should be employed and how they should be employed, and b) Mitigating actions can be implemented to minimise the harm and maximise the benefits from a specific planned solution or related activity.
In the larger societal context, by achieving these advantages, other benefits include positive impacts such as accountability and acceptability. Accountability means that CM participants are in various ways responsible for what they do and should be able to give a satisfactory reason for it. Acceptability of solutions, since crisis managers depend on the society accepting the CM solutions, especially if the solutions are participatory in the sense that they require that the public actively engages in them.
The document on the SIA that will be provided to ISO/TC 292 will suggest a common guidance on how to carry out a Societal Impact Assessment on potential CM solutions. Potential CM solutions may be offered in terms of new technological tools or IT services, or non-technological processes or methods. The overall goal is to improve capability in the context of, and for any aspect of Crisis Management. Selecting a Crisis Management solution in a societal responsible way requires a systematic assessment approach that will allow an evaluation of the way the solution may impact the society. The SIA framework was initiated and developed within the DRIVER+ project for that purpose. The framework contains a structured methodology for assessing societal impact of CM solutions in order to avoid negative societal side effects. The potential standard should raise awareness on the importance of societal impact assessment in CM.
The background for the initiation of the process with regards to the SIA Framework is to contribute to a more harmonised view on societal impact. Public procurements typically look primarily at economic sustainability. When expensive technologies are being procured, there are several considerations to make. The technology must be fit for purpose, sustainable, and importantly: accepted by practitioners and society. If the technology is not accepted, the investment will not be successful. To some extent, CM solution procurement primarily considers the crisis managers and responder practitioners, and not the society around them. Therefore, a harmonised approach to SIA seems important. In addition, a more structured approach to SIA in CM and research projects can lead to a cultural change, where social impact becomes a natural part of daily activities. To contribute to such a mind-set change, so to focus not only on the economic impact and practitioners’ impact of new solutions but also on the societal impact, it was decided that the DRIVER+ SIA Framework should be further considered through the establishment of a PWI.
The following regulations are relevant for the proposed NWIP:
- Decision No 1313/2013/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism.
- Council Regulation (EU) 2016/369 on the provision of emergency support within the Union.
- Regulation No 375/2014 of the European Parliament and the Council on establishing the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps (‘EU Aid Volunteers initiative’).
- Regulation (EC) No 1257/96 concerning humanitarian aid.
- The aim of the Framework is to bring a practical and exploitable tool for conducting SIAs to solution providers, practitioner organizations/end-users and researchers working in CM, but also to raise awareness on the importance of societal impact assessment in CM.
8. Centre of Expertise (CoE) toolkit
To support interested organisations in becoming a functioning Centre of Expertise (CoE), DRIVER+ offers guidance to proceed through a three-stage process: Orienting & Positioning, Shaping & Implementing, and Operating & Evaluating. The three stages help an organisation to:
- Decide whether it wants to take up DRIVER+ outcomes and which one(s) (Orienting & Positioning).
- Undertake preparatory steps for becoming a Centre of Expertise, up to the point of formal establishment as a CoE (Shaping & Implementing).
- Perform activities as a CoE, evaluate this performance versus the expectations, and consider whether/ which adjustments are necessary (Performing & Evaluating).
These stages are indicative and non-binding and each organisation will undergo its own journey toward becoming a Centre of Expertise. The pathway to become a CoE depends on the local context and specific features of the organisation, the national and institutional context, ambition and resources at their disposal, as well as the network of organisations they would work in partnership with and support.
DRIVER+ developed a toolkit that supports organisations in becoming a CoE (https://www.driver-project.eu/centres-of-expertise-coe/). The toolkit provides organisations an entry point and assists them in exploring their opportunities, shaping the CoE, and performing as a CoE. Each Centre of Expertise will be unique and different, so the information in the toolkit is formulated in general terms. Examples illustrate how this general information can be used by potential CoEs in specific situations. Therefore, no ‘one size fits all’ operational plan has been developed: this depends on the specific context and ambition of the CoEs and can best be developed individually.
For each stage, the CoE toolkit covers all building blocks of the Business Model Canvas. Each building block contains questions and suggestions helping the organisations through each stage. The toolkit provides criteria and activities for guidance and support. In the first stage, Orienting & Positioning, the main activity for organisations is to explore the added value of the DRIVER+ products to decide whether these are of interest.
The second stage, Shaping & Implementing, starts when the organisation has decided regarding which DRIVER+ outcome(s) will be adopted. At the end of the Orienting & Positioning stage the organisation has a general outline of the value proposition, key activities, key partners, key resources, etc. During the Shaping & Implementing stage, these building blocks will be elaborated in more detail and consequently refined and consolidated.
The last stage, Performing & Evaluating, concerns checking whether everything is going according to plan, and evaluating and adjusting if necessary. In this phase, the organisation can also consider expanding its portfolio of DRIVER+ outcomes, adopt a new DRIVER+ outcome or revisit its activities.
To further support prospective CoEs in their decision making process, an interactive version of the CoE toolkit has been developed. This excel-based tool is developed and implemented in such a way it can be used as a self-assessment tool. The answers to the questions per building block can be rated by the organisation itself on a five point scale. Based on these ratings and the relative weights per rating, the CoE toolkit gives an assessment for Stages I and II: the prospective CoE is well on track (green colour), needs some further information (orange colour), or is not ready (red colour). For Stage III guiding questions are provided.
Potential Impact:
1. Potential impact
The overarching objective of the DRIVER+ project is to improve the way capability development and innovation management are tackled, by testing and validating (in realistic environments) solutions that are addressing the operational needs of practitioners dealing with Crisis Management. However, Crisis Management is a complex and multi-layered field, involving many different organisations and disciplines throughout its cycle (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery). With newly arising, cross-border security threats in Crisis Management (natural disasters, terrorist threats, pandemics, migration), Europe is in need of a convergence of resources, but also of solutions and knowledge, to better manage those ever-changing risks and threats. Market fragmentation, lack of common certification, as well as common standards in the field, adds to the challenges practitioners are facing today. To overcome these limitations, and therefore to reach a shared understanding in Crisis Management across Europe, there is a clear necessity for the creation of a united ecosystem in Crisis Management, the establishment of common practices, the access to similar information and the set-up of mechanisms for exchanges on lessons learned. The engagement of policy makers, researchers, practitioners, industry representatives, and citizens in Crisis Management innovation is a key to reduce fragmentation, create a shared understanding, and find better solutions to cope with today’s and tomorrow’s threats and crises.
Currently several frameworks, initiatives and visions for Crisis Management exist in Europe, but no overarching strategy has been defined yet at a macro level on how to effectively and efficiently involve the diverse groups of stakeholders. The current and most notable driving forces of this overarching strategical process are (i) the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism (EUCPM) and the envisioned Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network; (ii) DG HOME´s ‘Community of Users on Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies’ initiative (iii), the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC); (iv) the International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation (IFAFRI) and (v) the European Forum for Disaster Risk Reduction (EFDRR). While these mechanisms aim to define and implement this overarching strategy, a clear need to further develop, support, complement and strengthen the existing frameworks and initiatives has been identified in order to foster innovation and a shared understanding in Crisis Management across Europe.
The ambition of DRIVER+ with regards to an improved stakeholder engagement and the emergence of a shared understanding is first and foremost a long-term one: to build and engage with an active and structured Community of Practice in the field of Crisis Management that will be sustainable after the end of the project duration. The Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) is established to facilitate this interaction. It has the potential to become an overarching body connecting Crisis Management stakeholders to exchange best practices, lessons learned and innovative ideas, in order to facilitate the implementation of policies and the uptake of research and innovation by practitioners and policymakers.
This is complemented by significant contributions towards enhancing the shared understanding that were achieved by (1) creating a diverse set of sustainable results, ranging from the Test-bed to networking opportunities and a dynamic repository of innovative solutions, to the Trials and by (2) facilitating complex knowledge generation processes that resulted in comprehensive policy recommendations for the European CM domain, following a series of Policy-Research Dialogue Roundtable (PRDR) workshops and Innovation for Crisis Management (I4CM) events. There is a specific value in this approach which is fostering a shared understanding of Crisis Management at various levels and from complementary perspectives. The sustainability concerns that have guided the design and development of the DRIVER+ outputs give reason to expect that this shared understanding, as promoted by the project, will carry on beyond DRIVER+. It is obvious that a single research project could not overcome the fragmentation and political sensitiveness of the CM domain, but having ensured the sustainability of all main outputs will surely help in working towards this. This will be further stimulated by having the various EC actors (mainly DG HOME, DG ECHO, REA, JRC) using these outputs themselves and strongly endorsing the uptake by other stakeholders (policy makers, practitioners, research and capacity building projects). The current COVID-19 situation will surely trigger a critical reflection on the current setup of crisis management within Europe; this window of opportunity might lead to a more integrated CM system in Europe. Crises affecting several MS simultaneously need an integrated and harmonized approach across Europe, and for this, a common understanding of CM in Europe is preconditional.
In order to achieve the potential impacts, DRIVER+ has formulated several recommendations to the EC. This are described below.
A) Implement a forward-looking capability planning mechanism in practitioner organisations
Many practitioner organisations do what they have to do: prepare for and respond to urgent and actual crisis situations. Planning is usually covering a period up to five years ahead. The initiation of research and innovation activities is often triggered by specific events. This limited timeframe and reactive approach leads to a situation in which fast-changing security situations are not adequately dealt with. The risk is that research and innovation programmes are focusing on solving yesterday’s crises. A pre-condition to a capability deployment programme would be the establishment of a forward-looking capability planning process in Disaster Risk Management and Security. Such a process would identify medium to long-term needs and gaps and would contribute to the definition of EU Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) agendas matching the end-user requirements.
To achieve this goal, besides the practitioners, experts from various technological and social sciences, both from the Crisis Management and other domains, need to closely collaborate with each other. These experts conduct technology watches, inventory socio-cultural, climate and demographic developments, and determine potential impacts on the practitioners. Based on these potential future scenarios, capabilities can be described and associated topics for future research programs identified.
This structured capability development approach needs to be implemented at Member States level feeding into the research programming at EC level to address validated and broadly accepted practitioners’ needs. And ideally, these expert groups collaborate across the EU and Associated Countries, in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts, to learn from each other and to allow an exploitation of synergies between the efforts already undertaken at MS level and the ones expected to be complementary on the EU level. The established H2020 Practitioner Networks as well as the DRIVER+ CoE network can play an important facilitating role in this respect. Obviously, these networks must be sustained after the respective projects for which support of national governments may be needed.
It must be understood, however, that the future is volatile, thus research and innovation projects cannot and should not in all cases directly be linked to clearly defined capabilities. Low ‘Technology Readiness Level’ (TRL) research actions in the work programmes should be included and be as open as possible to allow the inclusion of potential disruptive technologies. A close link between the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) program and the domain of DRM needs to be established. Because there is much uncertainty about the future usability of these technologies, the initial duration of such projects should be limited with options for continuation if the results are promising and the future need is still acknowledged. This requires a more flexible and agile research and innovation programming.
B) Adopt a common trial and validation framework
Following the steps in the capability development cycle, from an analysis of gaps and needs, via an assessment of what is available, to research and innovation, and eventually to acquisition, strongly supports the successful implementation of innovative technologies into the field of operations at MS level. Validation of whether these needs have been properly addressed should be the responsibility of the MS. In order to support this validation already during the research and innovation projects, it is beneficial to introduce a pan-European trial and validation framework (like the DRIVER+ Test-bed) into the European research programme. A standardised methodology for trialling and validation should be adopted, or at least it should be a requirement to clearly explain the trial and validation methods to be used. This is not always the case, leading to the potential risk of having an imprecise or inaccurate understanding of the outcomes of a trial, of the reliability and validity of its results and its potential benefits for practitioner organisations.
C) Align MS and EU capability development strategies
In many Member States, national institutions are often fragmented and spread across different line ministries leading to poor communication and lack of cooperation: national harmonisation is required. In addition, policy-makers should take ownership of the results. If they call for specific topics/research, they should feel responsible for implementing the results, or at least facilitating their implementation.
The establishment of the pan-European network of CoEs contributes to a partnership-based DRM innovation ecosystem supporting the alignment of capability development strategies of practitioner organisations, Member States’ authorities, European institutions, the research community and the private sector (industry, incubators). This innovation eco-system should be practitioner-driven to ensure practical outputs, systematic tests and trials, and a service-oriented approach. Achieving this would require the adoption of a co-creation process and the constant involvement of practitioners. This multiple-stakeholder engagement is crucial, as the perspectives of practitioners, researchers, policy-makers, industry and citizens on what a “good” result is can be very different.
The rationale for a partnership-based approach lies in the need to implement an efficient capability process that would allow the common missions, needs and operational requirements to be defined and, at the same time, identify possible solutions matching these requirements in a mid to long-term time frame. In the process, the demand side (responsible for the assessment of needs), the research community (better placed to identify technology and capability gaps) and the private sector (well positioned to develop solutions and provide services) complement each other. Such a “requirement pull” approach would make security research investments at MS and EU level more efficient by linking RD&I activities to capability deployment, completing the mission-oriented approach proposed in the Horizon Europe Regulation.
D) Allow for a sufficient size and duration of Security RD&I projects
Simply reducing the duration of projects does not lead to shorter times to market. On the contrary: rushing the development and testing of new solutions may lead to suboptimal results, no imple-mentation, and even negative effects on operational performance. In the end, such duration reduction strategy results in a disinvestment and loss of time. Likewise, minimizing the size of projects does not automatically increase the efficiency, and large projects do not automatically lead to inefficiency. Projects at the scale of DRIVER+ can definitely provide an added value. A larger scale project creates mass, can deliver rather mature, consistent and integrated products and can mobilise and bring together a broad community of different stakeholders.
E) Lift the coordination of useful project interactions to DG level
It is important to note that RD&I projects are no stand-alone projects, but rather a shackle in a chain. In order to have an as strong chain as possible, leading to a successful implementation of new solutions, key actors of the next step in the innovation process should already be actively engaged. Research is only part of the journey, only piece of the bigger security puzzle. One potential way of articulating the connections among the pieces, is to lift the coordination of useful project interactions to DG level; this would allow further policymaking to draw from the learnings in the Security RD&I projects performed. This could be organised via a dedicated CSA organising a platform to facilitate synergies and to avoid duplication in efforts managed by the DG directly. As reflected in the Security Union, the high interdisciplinarity of research topics in Secure Societies also asks for recognition of several other activities, e.g. under DG ECHO, DG SANCO, DG DEFIS, EDA, and ESA, which is difficult to achieve from the view of a single project. This higher level coordination will avoid fragmentation of the RD&I landscape and support the integration of the various results.
F) Adopt research results as EC
An active endorsement of project results by the EC is crucial for the credibility and acceptance of these results by stakeholders. However, the EC itself is also an important stakeholder and potential user of project outcomes, and should not just coordinating/monitoring and financing the projects. Specifically related to DRIVER+, the TGM and the TTI could be used as a common trial and validation framework (DG HOME, DG ECHO, REA, JRC), as well as instruments to further enhance the design and evaluation of exercises (DG ECHO); the PoS and the L3 could contribute to building a proper understanding of the current state-of-the-art solutions and lessons learned (REA, DG HOME); CMINE can support the engagement with the relevant communities and stakeholders within the CoU and the Practitioner Networks (DG HOME), the EUCP Knowledge Network (DG ECHO) and the dissemination of project results (REA, DG RTD); the CoE network can boost the collaboration and exchange of information, results and experiences between all stakeholders within the innovation ecosystem and stimulates the access to research results (DG HOME, JRC, DG ECHO).
Also for future projects the EC should seriously consider adopting and using results of projects that are financed with EC funds. Participation as a potential user during the project would be the first and minimum step: not only at the very end of a project, but preferably at the beginning so as to include their user input and feedback, and to align with current (and emerging) EC policy frameworks.
G) Advance the dialogue between all stakeholders
Preconditional to establishing structured partnerships and aligning capability development strategies is the facilitation of a well-structured dialogue between all stakeholders. For this purpose, DG HOME has established the Community of Users for Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies. It has the ambition to develop synergies among research and capacity-building projects and to contribute to Strategic Civil Security Research Agendas in support of the Horizon Europe programming. As part of the rescEU policy framework, the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network is being established. Currently under development, the Knowledge Network will support experts, practitioners, policy-makers, researchers, trainers and volunteers at every stage of the disaster management cycle through networking, partnerships, collaborative opportunities, and access to expertise and good practices.
All EC-funded projects are currently required to build and maintain their own stakeholder communities and to create their own community platform. In general, the individual projects seem to compete amongst each other in this respect and are hesitant towards sharing their networks with other projects and initiatives. After the projects end, there is a high risk that these networks become inactive, potentially leading to less enthusiasm with the stakeholders to join yet another community for future projects. It is recommended that the EC (REA, DG HOME) not only endorses but actually requires the usage of one common technology-supported community platform by all projects (at least within Secure Societies). This not only enhances the exchange of information and creates synergies, but also saves time and tax payer’s money. DRIVER+ has developed CMINE which is a suitable candidate community platform.
H) Align the EC financial instruments
A more efficient approach to the research programming and the consecutive procurement of solutions should be based on a medium to long-term approach following a systematic process of the definition of needs, identification of capability gaps and definition of common operational requirements that would allow the successful implementation of the solutions, enhancing interoperability and minimising, at the same time, the risk of security breaches. Going from idea to market asks for a coherent development trajectory, reflecting all stages of technology readiness and maturity to be achieved to come up with a final innovative solution. This cannot be covered by one single RD&I project: this trajectory comprises multiple, often sequential projects, partly involving different partners. It calls for a better alignment of H2020/Horizon Europe programs with other financial instruments and funding mechanisms (e.g. capacity building projects, DG ECHO funded exercises, INTERREG, national innovation programs) to develop projects from early stage concept up to advanced prototype solutions leading to a successful implementation and market uptake.
DRIVER+ was conducted within the context of FP7. It was a so-called demonstration project, and within H2020 and HEU this kind of projects does not exist anymore as such. Furthermore, DRIVER+ was a project within the area of Disaster Resilient Societies. Nevertheless, it is expected that the results, lessons learned and the recommendations also apply to H2020 and HEU projects as well as projects outside of the CM and DRM domain.
2 Main dissemination activities
Dissemination and communications activities have been an integral aspect of DRIVER+ since the beginning of the project. In the starting phases, the main objective was to motivate different stakeholder groups to become involved with the project and take part in the different preparatory workshops, events and Trials. For this, the project vision and potential benefits to the Crisis Management community had to be effectively communicated. As the project began to give tangible results, the communication activities became more outputs-oriented. This was essential in order to generate interest from practitioner organisations in adopting DRIVER+ outputs. As DRIVER+ enters its final stage, the question of sustainability becomes of utmost importance: stakeholders must be reassured with regards to this aspect if they are to invest time and effort in adopting project outputs and must know where to find support once the project has ended. At each stage of the project, dissemination and communication activities have supported these evolving objectives by creating adequate promotional material, adapted to different formats and uses and implementing strategies that allowed the project to engage with the desired group of stakeholders using the right messaging.
2.1 Start-up phase: Informing about the project and results
The aim of the start-up phase is to inform identified stakeholders about the project – its vision, objectives, activities and results. In the first months of implementation (M41-M52), a new visual identity was created for DRIVER+; the stakeholder and press databases were reassembled; the public website was set up and a basic package of assets (leaflet, brochure, roll-up banner, animated infographic video, and PowerPoint presentation) were created to provide the consortium with basic communication material. Furthermore, a set of dissemination and communication guidelines were established to ensure consistency.
Following the 5th Technical Review meeting in September 2018 (M53), it was stressed that the focus should be shifted to project results. This led to the commissioning of individual logos to identify each output as well as to the creation of a new section on the project website dedicated to showcasing results (outputs, deliverables and other reports). Since August 2019 (M64), this results-oriented dissemination and communication approach has been pursued and deepened, most notably through the production of promotional assets for the different DRIVER+ outputs including leaflets in all cases and videos when appropriate. A redefinition of the online and mass-media strategy was decided upon to match the specific objectives of the final phase of the project, namely:
- Promoting the Final Conference with the aim of enrolling 300 profiled delegates.
- Communicating on the benefits that conducting innovation Trials based on the DRIVER+ Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM) and the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI) can bring to Crisis Management organisations and solutions providers.
- Calling on the Crisis Management community to make use of the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) for discussion, information sharing and networking.
- Encouraging European organisations focused on Crisis Management training and capacity development to explore the possibility of becoming a DRIVER+ Centre of Expertise.
- Encouraging solution providers, practitioner organisations and affiliated European projects to use the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS), particularly to register low TRL solutions.
DRIVER+ visual identity
The core of the revised DRIVER+ visual identity is the project logo, which uses a shape evoking a tornado. The colours selected were blue (resilience, reliability) and orange (optimism, novelty). Specific logos were also created for the different DRIVER+ products and events.
Public website
The public website, launched in December 2017, is the hub that reassembles all public information, documentation and promotional assets. Its content and structure has evolved along with the project.
Newsletter
The DRIVER+ newsletter has been used as a tool to bring attention to the project’s achievements and as an opportunity for continuous engagement with stakeholders who have been involved with DRIVER+ in different qualities and stages of the project. A total of ten newsletters have been sent over the duration of the project.
Social media
DRIVER+ is present on social media through the project’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Through the Twitter account, the project communications reach other research projects, practitioner and academic organisations, solutions providers and policymaking bodies. Being present on LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a way for the project to interact with stakeholders on an individual level by connecting with their personal accounts. Based on specific objectives per key target group, a series of key messages was subsequently outlined for each category to be disseminated across the social media platforms. On the basis of these objectives and key messages, a social media calendar was created for each month. Planning for content in advance provides an overview of the project’s social media communications over several weeks, thereby ensuring coherence and thoroughness. A conscientious effort was made to use social media to fully exploit and distribute the wide array of communications supports produced throughout the project: professional photography, interviews, trailers, animations, leaflets, reports.
In addition to Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, the project had also set up a YouTube channel, used as a video library to host and easily share the more than 20 videos produced by the project and organise them according to thematic playlists (e.g. outputs, Trials, events). These videos were also made available via the project website.
Mass media relations
From the start of the project, a subject-specific media contacts database was created, and press releases have been consistently circulated to promote events and announce the achievement of milestones. Press releases were circulated amongst the project’s media database and shared with the consortium for dissemination within the partners’ networks. They are also published on CORDIS Wire when they pertain to major project milestones. The list of press releases issued since the beginning of the project as well as the complete list of press clippings and press releases can be found on the Media section of the public website.
2.2 Demonstration phase: getting feedback from stakeholders
The Demonstration phase encompasses activities aimed at consulting with and involving external stakeholders. Consultation with external DRIVER+ stakeholders was structured around different event series, most notably I4CM (‘Innovation for Crisis Management’) and PRDR (‘Policy-Research Dialogue Roundtables’). The I4CM events bring together local practitioners and solutions providers to meet, exchange best practices and give visibility to their initiatives. They focus on specific Crisis Management topics (i.e. inter-agency/cross-border cooperation for I4CM Warsaw and volunteer management for I4CM Copenhagen). Various dissemination and communication initiatives (distribution of press releases, social media strategy) were put in place to promote these events and their outcomes.
The PRDRs are closed events. To promote attendance to qualified delegates, relevant stakeholder categories were identified according to the topic of each edition. Three PRDR events were organised together with DG HOME:
A) Supporting a pan-European approach to capability development in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction and Crisis Management
B) Discussing the contributions to the programming of disaster risk management component of Horizon Europe
C) Collaboration in research-related standardisation activities in crisis management
A DRIVER+ User Workshop was organised, which focused on presenting project outputs to potential users.
A list of third-party events was created at the project start and circulated to all partners. This list has been regularly updated and shared with partners on a monthly basis, which can in turn update the document themselves. Participation in these events resulted from partners’ initiatives or from a suggestion of the communication team. Particular attention was devoted to diversifying the type of events in order to best cover the various DRIVER+ components. Overall, participation at third-party events took careful consideration of the expected aim, the target audience and the benefits to be achieved in order to maximise impact.
In support of the Trials and Final Demonstration, several dissemination and communication activities were conducted. A communications plan was devised for each DRIVER+ Trial, including:
- Production of a Trial Catalogue of Solutions that contains general information about the project as well as key facts on the Trial scenario and the solutions being tested.
- The design and implementation of a social media strategy covering event and the days preceding and succeeding the Trial.
- The drafting and circulation amongst specialised media of a press release before and after the event.
- The documentation of the event for the general public through a video report.
- Generation of professional stills imagery, freely available via the project website.
As part of the Final Demo, a VIP event was organised to engage with key Polish stakeholders, as well as announcing the officialization of the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences as the first DRIVER+ Centre of Expertise.
2.3 Sustainability phase: evaluating, sustaining and disseminating results
An “Impact and Sustainability Communications Strategy” was outlined resulting in the following activities and outputs.
Promotional material for DRIVER+ outputs
A leaflet for each of the main DRIVER+ products was created following the same structure: a) What is it? b) Who is it for? c) What is the added value? Each leaflet features an explanatory illustration. It is digitally available in all EU languages.
A Flipbook was created to reassemble all the leaflets in an easily shareable digital format. It also includes a general introduction and illustration explaining how all the outputs fit together. Translations of the Flipbook are available in priority languages French, Dutch, Polish, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and Estonian as defined according to the working language of organisations highly involved with the project, or potential Centres of Expertise.
Several videos have been produced. a five-minute introduction to the DRIVER+ Test-bed was created using footage from the different Trials and interviews with key project staff. An introductory animation of the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure had previously been created. Additionally, four Testimonial videos provide insight into different aspects of the project from a personal perspective. A video providing a general overview of the project was produced and shown at the Final Conference. This video, together with the leaflets, provides several pieces of dissemination collateral that may be used by any partners or Centres of Expertise, indeed even after the conclusion of the project to support discussions about any of the DRIVER+ outputs.
Final Conference
The DRIVER+ Final Conference, organised on 19-20 February 2020 at the BluePoint Brussels conference centre, had two main objectives. The first one was to showcase and demonstrate the DRIVER+ sustainable outputs and to promote their use and adoption. The second was to put these outputs into a larger context of Crisis Management innovation and community-building. On the afternoon of February 18th, the day before the start of the Final Conference, a VIP session was organised for national and EU policy makers, senior practitioners and innovation managers. The attendees benefitted from a private tour of the DRIVER+ exhibition as well as dedicated keynotes and a panel discussion on the policy implications of the DRIVER+ outputs among representatives from DG ECHO, DG HOME, JRC and Campus Vesta. The conference aimed both at supporting the sustainability of DRIVER+ results and giving them sense by putting them in a larger framework. This double objective was reflected by the choice of speakers that consisted of a combination of DRIVER+ internal speakers and externals, who would be addressing the bigger picture of Crisis Management and disaster risk reduction and cross-cutting issues such as climate change and social inclusion. In this manner, the programme ensured strong visibility of the DRIVER+ project at the event, its network and its results, while at the same time positioning these within a larger context.
3. Exploitation of results
All DRIVER+ products have been developed based on validated practitioner needs, gaps and research questions, in a co-creation process with many different practitioners, stimulating the uptake of these products, and with a variety of stakeholders, both within and outside the consortium, bringing together a wide range of visions, knowledge, skills and networks, making the project outputs useful for a large community. As such, DRIVER+ was able to produce valuable results that benefit crisis management stakeholders and other EU funded safety and security research innovation projects.
All products developed in the project have been published under open source licences. This means that anybody is free to use, share, adapt and further distribute the tools. This includes permission on commercial exploitation, except for the TGM Handbook. The following licencing schemes apply:
- Trial Guidance Methodology Handbook: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- Societal Impact Assessment Analysis Framework: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- Societal Impact Assessment Training: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- Crisis Management Terminology: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (Note: When the terminology is published as part the PoS, the PoS Data licence will be applicable)
- Training Module: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
- Portfolio of Solutions Software: MIT License (Note that the existing Drupal blocks are licensed under GPL)
- Portfolio of Solutions Data: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- Trial Guidance Tool: MIT License
- Trial Guidance Tool Data: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- Lessons Learned Library: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- CMINE Online Platform: service contract established between Hivebrite (owner) and RAN (community manager)
- Centre of Expertise Toolkit: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- All four CEN Workshop Agreements are published under the copyright of CEN (see www.cen.eu)
To ease the use and adoption process, all main outcomes have been translated and are available in nine EU languages. To facilitate the further uptake of the results a DRIVER+ Adopters Package has been produced and widely distributed. This concise and attractive-looking package provides per main outcome a short description of: the outcome, the intended users and expected added value, and practical information on how to access the tools and find support for sustained use of the outcomes.
The vision of DRIVER+ has been to create a pan-European arena of virtually connected facilities and crisis labs where users, solution providers, researchers, policy makers and citizens can jointly progress on new approaches or solutions to emerging issues. This network is intended to not only facilitate innovation in CM, but also to generate a European CM culture and more shared understanding of CM across Europe. The nodes in this pan-European network are labelled as Centres of Expertise. In order to facilitate the uptake and implementation of the DRIVER+ products, the project has followed an intense, practitioner-driven approach, and several user manuals and animations have been developed, as well as a Training Module. Nevertheless, these products are not fully self-explanatory and very likely additional support is needed to assist practitioner organisations in implementing, applying and tailor-making these products. This expert-support can best be provided by an organisation having a central (national) role in the capability development of practitioner organisations: the Centre of Expertise (CoE).
To ensure the sustainability and further development of the results, the DRIVER+ consortium has established a pan-European Centres of Expertise (CoE) network, consisting of reputed European institutions. The DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise support practitioner organisations in the field of crisis management, disaster risk reduction and security in their capability development and innovation management. They do this by applying one or more of the main DRIVER+ products.
The CoE members are practitioner-driven organisations. In principle it is not feasible for universities, Research & Technology Organisations, consultancy firms and solution providers to become a CoE. Exceptions may be possible (e.g. due to specific expertise). A Centre of Expertise will act, whenever relevant and possible, as an intermediary between practitioner organisations and (applied) research organisations, solution providers, public administration and policy-makers in the crisis management and security domain. In order to work together within this innovation ecosystem, an exchange of information, results and experiences between all stakeholders, projects and knowledge networks should be facilitated. With this purpose in mind, the DRIVER+ pan-European network of Centres of Expertise has been established. As the implementations and experiences will vary from organisation to organisation as well as between Member States, this CoE network will gather and share lessons learned, and, if necessary, adapt the respective DRIVER+ outcomes to organisational and/or national contexts. Sharing these experiences and lessons learned within the pan-European network of CoEs, is crucial. Only then a shared understanding in crisis management, and a shared approach in practitioners’ capability development can be achieved and further improved.
For the CoE network, a governance structure with a rotating chair has been agreed upon with the founding partners during the CoE governance meeting held in June 2020. During the first year after DRIVER+ the network will be chaired by SRC PAS and co-chaired by RAN. The founding members of the DRIVER+ CoE network are:
- Crisis Information Centre - Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences – CIK.
- Main School of Fire Service – SGSP (Poland).
- Austrian Red Cross.
- Lithuanian Cybercrime Center of Excellence for Training, Research, Development and Education – L3CE.
- Entente pour la Forêt Méditerranéenne – Valabre (France).
- Estonian Academy of Security Sciences – EASS.
- Resilience Advisors Network – RAN (Ireland).
- German Federal Agency for Technical Relief – THW (Germany).
- Campus Vesta (Belgium).
- Peace Research Institute Oslo – PRIO (Norway).
- Disaster Competence Network Austria – DCNA.
Also MSB (Sweden) and IFV (Netherlands) are connected to the CoE network. For an up-to-date overview of CoEs including contact info, DRIVER+ outcome they support, and offered services, see: https://www.driver-project.eu/centres-of-expertise/.
Furthermore, both DG ECHO and DG HOME have expressed their strong interest in the project’s results. Discussions with DG ECHO on how the DRIVER+ outcomes may contribute to the EU Civil Protection Knowledge Network have taken place since the Final Demo in November 2019, and will continue after the project. In addition, there are ongoing discussions with DG HOME on how especially the CMINE can support the Community of Users for Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies, and these will continue beyond the project as well. To further stimulate the uptake of the PoS, and to stimulate the acceptance of the Pos by DG HOME and DG ECHO, we have established links with the Projects Explorer and Gaps Explorer developed by the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC), and included the gaps as identified by the International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation (IFAFRI). In addition, the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the EC has expressed their interest in becoming a CoE, with a particular interest in the Test-bed to further strengthen their European Crisis Management Laboratory (ECML).
The beneficiaries of DRIVER+ will be applying the various products in new national and EU-funded projects. Furthermore, the results are used to improve their own products and services to be offered to their customers, and to attract new customers and/or partners.
List of Websites:
https://www.driver-project.eu/
Current and future challenges, due to increasingly severe consequences of natural disasters and terrorist threats, require the development and uptake of innovative solutions that are addressing the operational needs of practitioners dealing with Crisis Management. DRIVER+ (Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience) is an FP7 Crisis Management demonstration project aiming at improving the way capability development and innovation management is tackled. DRIVER+ has three main objectives:
1. Develop a pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development:
1.1 Develop a common guidance methodology and tool, supporting Trials and the gathering of lessons learnt.
1.2 Develop an infrastructure to create relevant environments, for enabling the trialling of new solutions and to explore and share Crisis Management capabilities.
1.3 Run Trials in order to assess the value of solutions addressing specific needs using guidance and infrastructure.
1.4 Ensure the sustainability of the pan-European Test-bed.
2. Develop a well-balanced comprehensive Portfolio of Crisis Management Solutions:
2.1 Facilitate the usage of the Portfolio of Solutions.
2.2 Ensure the sustainability of the Portfolio of Solutions.
3. Facilitate a shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe:
3.1 Establish a common background.
3.2 Cooperate with external partners in joint Trials.
3.3 Disseminate project results.
In order to achieve these objectives, five Subprojects (SPs) have been established. SP91 Project Management is devoted to consortium level project management, and it is also in charge of the alignment of DRIVER+ with external initiatives on Crisis Management for the benefit of DRIVER+ and its stakeholders. In DRIVER+, all activities related to Societal Impact Assessment are part of SP91 as well. SP92 Test-bed will deliver a guidance methodology and guidance tool supporting the design, conduct and analysis of Trials and will develop a reference implementation of the Test-bed. It will also create the scenario simulation capability to support execution of the Trials. SP93 Solutions will deliver the Portfolio of Solutions which is a database driven web site that documents all the available DRIVER+ solutions, as well as solutions from external organisations. Adapting solutions to fit the needs addressed in Trials will be done in SP93. SP94 Trials will organize four series of Trials as well as the Final Demo (FD). SP95 Impact, Engagement and Sustainability, is in charge of communication and dissemination, and also addresses issues related to improving sustainability, market aspects of solutions, and standardisation.
The DRIVER+ Trials and the Final Demonstration will benefit from the DRIVER+ Test-bed, providing the technological infrastructure, the necessary supporting methodology and adequate support tools to prepare, conduct and evaluate the Trials. All results from the Trials will be stored and made available in the Portfolio of Solutions, being a central platform to present innovative solutions from consortium partners and third parties, and to share experiences and best practices with respect to their application. In order to enhance the current European cooperation framework within the Crisis Management domain and to facilitate a shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe, DRIVER+ will carry out a wide range of activities. Most important will be to build and structure a dedicated Community of Practice in Crisis Management, thereby connecting and fostering the exchange of lessons learnt and best practices between Crisis Management practitioners as well as technological solution providers.
Project Context and Objectives:
Crisis Management (CM) is an ever evolving challenge. Hazards change, both for natural and man-made reasons – climate change being a well-known example of the latter. Vulnerabilities change, for reasons ranging from the establishment of settlements in new areas to societal evolution affecting people’s ability to cope with crises. Interconnectedness changes because of increased connectivity in the technical domain, for example the power transmission system, and in the socio-cultural domain as cross-border communities become increasingly important. All these societal, technical and environmental changes interact to create new challenges for Crisis Management. These evolving challenges are not compensated by traditional challenges becoming obsolete. Instead, as societies become more complex, both the increasing scope and unpredictability of potential crises, and the rapid dynamics of the incidents to be managed demand crisis management of an ever higher level of complexity. This does not necessarily mean that the frequency of crises increases, but unless innovation is up to the challenge of producing solutions, which fully exploit modularity, flexibility and adaptivity; then either the cost of capability development or the costs due to inadequate management of crises will grow.
On the other hand, it is a necessary starting point of CM innovation to realise that the European Crisis Management capabilities are already a mature and competent System of Systems – here interpreted as a federation of heterogeneous and loosely coupled local, regional and national systems able to collaborate in varying configurations and with varying levels of interoperability. Radical change to these capabilities would be very costly and likely incur unacceptable loss of CM capability during a long transition phase.
For the reasons outlined above DRIVER+ is not about wholesale redesign of CM capabilities. Instead it is about the simultaneous launch of an ability to adapt European CM to future demands as they emerge by means of a distributed European Test-bed for CM capability development of virtually connected exercise facilities and crisis labs where users, providers, researchers, policy makers and citizens jointly and iteratively can progress on new approaches or solutions to emerging issues, and of a well-balanced comprehensive portfolio of CM solutions (here taken also to include tools, operational concepts, and approaches). This portfolio should supplement the valuable European CM legacy in a cost-effective manner with regard to current and foreseeable challenges, and it should be innovative by exploiting RTD work done not least in FP7 and FP6 projects.
The Test-bed and the portfolio are the two main dimensions of DRIVER+ –and they also constitute two of the three main S&T objectives, which make up DRIVER+’s mission, the third being a more shared understanding of Crisis Management (CM) across Europe. These three objectives support each other: the Test-bed will be used to test, select and develop the portfolio of tools, and conversely this concrete work is also necessary for developing and validating the testbed. Both the work towards the portfolio of tools and its well-balanced result requires intense interaction by DRIVER+ with CM stakeholders and is, therefore, also likely to create more shared understanding among these stakeholders across Europe. Further, this shared understanding is a prerequisite for adoption of the tools of the DRIVER+ portfolio in Member States (which, however, should not be expected to be wholesale since different countries and regions will still have different needs). Finally, this shared understanding will strengthen the long-term sustainability of the Test-bed, and ultimately enhance European CM capabilities. Additionally, developing exploitation goals far beyond the project's horizon will be an implicit aim.
The first objective of the DRIVER+ project was to facilitate the capability development of practitioner organisations in the field of disaster risk management. To do this you need to have a very good method for conducting Trials: how do you define your gaps and how do you address these in a proper and sound way? We have developed a methodology, the Trial Guidance Methodology, for that, to support practitioner organisations, as well as the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure to create realistic environments for testing out new solutions, for bridging these gaps. So, developing a pan-European Test-bed was one of the main objectives of the DRIVER+ project.
Furthermore, with objective two we developed the Portfolio of Solutions. The main reason for developing this was to help practitioner organisations identify which capability gaps they have, and how they want to bridge them, and how to look for and access the required solutions. You may not know what solutions are available outside your organisation, let alone what solutions are emerging from research projects. Therefore, we have created the Portfolio of Solutions that can help you identify the available solutions that might be of interest for you. The great strength of the Portfolio of Solutions is that it not only contains information from the solution providers but it also contains experiences from peers. Users are not having to rely only on what the providers are claiming their solutions can do. Many of the solutions have been tested in Trials. We have populated the Portfolio of Solutions with solutions that we have tested during our Trials, so actually meeting the requirements of our practitioners in the project. But the Portfolio of Solutions is of course open to any other solution, even though they may not have been tested in the project, but which can provide some information on experiences and results.
The third objective related to creating and facilitating a shared understanding in Crisis Management throughout Europe, and we have done that in various ways. We have our I4CM (Innovation for Crisis Management) events, which are crisis management conferences, interactive workshops and marketplaces. We also have our PRDR’s, the Policy Research Dialogue Roundtables, where we are specifically focusing on the connection between policymakers and research. And we are also inviting many external researchers, practitioners and policymakers to our Trials so that we can share with them, show them what the products are that we are testing and developing and what the results are. We are making them part of that, explicitly asking for their feedback during these events, as observers for instance. That way they get a far better understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, and what the benefits are for them applying these products as well.
In addition, we are working on standardisation activities, not so much on developing the standards themselves as that takes quite some time, but we have started a CEN workshop agreement, so we are preparing the ground for a formal standardisation process. The outcomes of a workshop agreement are pretty close to a real standard. Standards, of course, help with a real understanding of what users and solutions providers are talking about; in the fields of terminology and definitions, in the field of Crisis Management, for the Trial Guidance Methodology, the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure, and information management. You can see information on this on the CMINE section of the DRIVER+ website where we have a specific taskgroup on standardisation.
CMINE (the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe) offers a platform for shared understanding in Crisis Management, to generate and exchange new ideas, and to share experiences in many different fields in Crisis Management. For us, of course, it is initially related to the DRIVER+ products, the Trials that we have developed, but it is a virtual platform where everybody can meet and exchange information.
We have about 30 different partners in the consortium coming from practitioner organisations and emergency services, research and technology organisations, universities, industries and small enterprises, and NGO’s. These are spread all over Europe, with a large number of participant countries.
We are really developing the tools and the methods that can be used by practitioner organisations themselves for their capability development and innovation management. We are working on a common methodology to address capability development in a structured manner, leading to recommendations and follow-up research questions in a very systematic way, leading to recommendations supporting the implementation of new solutions. It facilitates sharing your experiences, so that you can easily share your lessons learned with other organisations, and you know that the results that come out of the Trials are valid.
It is tempting for researchers to write a very extensive, scientifically oriented approach in isolation, but what we did was put practitioners at the heart of the methodology, trying to look through the eyes of practitioner organisations; how they think, what kinds of words and language they use in the real world. And we needed to think how to make this methodology understandable for practitioners, so that they can apply it themselves.
You need many other disciplines as well, innovation management, capability development, a multi-disciplinary approach, but we were putting the practitioners at the centre, and it was quite a moment when we could say: ‘It’s working, it’s being appreciated’. And we have seen many external organisations looking at the Trial Guidance Methodology for the first time, trying to work with it, they are very enthusiastic.
It went through quite a few iterations. So, while developing the methodology, we were already applying it. During the development and execution, and the evaluation of the Trials, we came up with an initial version of the Trial Guidance Methodology based on experiences during the whole Trial process. We tried out different working forms, different steps, it was a continuous and iterative development of the methodology, both within each Trial but also between all of the Trials. Likewise, the development of the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure also followed this iterative approach.
We did this initially with the DRIVER+ consortium partners, plus we recruited industries and practitioner organisations to have this multi perspective. Later on, in fact quite soon, we also involved other external people not directly involved in the project, making them a part of the development as well, explaining what we were doing, explicitly seeking feedback. They came up with recommendations as well.
A good example is the solutions providers. We have not only made use of the solutions from our internal DRIVER+ consortium partners but have brought in external ones as well to fill gaps identified by the practitioners. By having these external participants within the team they became a real part of the team, they were really co-designing the Trials together with us, how their solutions could best be tested and how the methodology could best be applied.
In the Trials the leading developers were some of the main participants, heavily involved in retrieving the feedback and implementing it. What we did was create a really open atmosphere, and that was critical in many aspects of the project, creating a really safe environment for receiving feedback. That is how we communicated between all of the teams working on this.
If something went wrong, for whatever reason, we recognised this and took it into account. We were trying to discover how the Trials worked best, and sometimes these were not easy moments. People put in a lot of effort, they were very dedicated, and the feedback may have been - ‘This didn’t work’ - and sometimes this was not comfortable. But it was always well taken by everybody, always in a very constructive atmosphere, and that really helped in improving the methodology and the Test-bed Technical infrastructure.
We all see the urgency of climate change and in connection with this project it was a very valid choice of focus that was made. Floods and wildfires are both very relevant for the European context, earthquake to a lesser extent, although in some countries this threat is very relevant. Industrial accidents such as chemical spills are also highly important. Overall, the types of risks we were dealing with in the project are all relevant. But actually it doesn’t matter which kind of crisis or risk you are looking at. We are of the opinion that the approach that we have followed is so robust and structured that it can also be applied to other types of disasters and risks. So, for a mass gathering event or a riot, which are completely different in terms of actors etc, if you look at identifying the gaps and the questions that you want to answer, how to test solutions, how to select solutions, and how to structure your evaluation, the method and the approach we have developed can also be transferred and applied.
All tools and products that we have developed are open source, openly available for everybody to use and adapt if necessary. We are in the process of establishing Centres of Expertise that will maintain the quality and the application of the main products and outputs coming out of the DRIVER+ project, so that future adopters and users can be supported in a very structured way. What we hope to achieve is that the further development of these products will then be safeguarded as well. Once the project has ended there will be other experiences from other stakeholders and other users, and that may lead to new modifications or alterations. And we want users and Centres of Expertise to exchange experiences among each other, to align and harmonise approaches and methodologies, although local differences could still be possible. That is also why we have the CMINE, to offer a platform for exchanging knowledge, lessons learned and experiences, and for facilitating a harmonised approach, for sharing the knowledge.
Project Results:
1. Introduction
DRIVER+ aimed at improving the way capability development and innovation management are tackled, by assessing and validating (in realistic environments) solutions that are addressing the operational needs of Crisis Management practitioners. In order to achieve this, DRIVER+ has worked towards three main objectives:
- Develop a pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development.
- Develop a well-balanced comprehensive portfolio of Crisis Management solutions.
- Facilitate a shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe.
These three objectives support each other. The Test-bed is used to trial, adjust and develop CM solutions. These solutions, including the experiences and Trial results, are included in the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS). The PoS can be consulted to find and select already available solutions to be trialled. Conducting Trials to test out solutions addressing the practitioners’ gaps requires an intense interaction by all stakeholders: CM practitioners, solution providers, policy-makers, researchers and citizen representatives. This interaction is structured and facilitated by the main components of the Test-bed, namely the Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM) and the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI). Furthermore, this interaction is supported by the shared overview of solutions in the PoS. Using both the Test-bed and the PoS contributes to the shared understanding in CM. This shared understanding is reinforced by CMINE, the online platform on which all stakeholders can discuss about gaps and needs, Trials and solutions, share experiences and lessons learned, and generate new ideas. By inviting non-DRIVER+ stakeholders to the various events (Trials, I4CM, PRDR, Final Demonstration, Final Conference, workshops, CWA activities), information about the DRIVER+ results is disseminated throughout Europe leading to increased willingness to adopt the outcomes; in addition, by explicitly asking for feedback on the Test-bed and the PoS, the quality of these products has continuously increased, resulting in better addressing the project objectives. Finally, the shared understanding has strengthened the long-term sustainability of the Test-bed, the PoS and CMINE, with high potential for enhancing European CM capabilities.
For each of the objectives, the DRIVER+ project has delivered the following set of concrete outcomes:
A pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development
The DRIVER+ Test-bed comprises the following main components:
- Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM)
- Trial Guidance Tool (TGT)
- Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI)
- Societal Impact Assessment Framework
- Training Module (TM)
A well-balanced comprehensive portfolio of Crisis Management solutions
The DRIVER+ Portfolio of Solutions comprises the following main components:
- Portfolio of Solutions (PoS):
- Lessons Learned Library (L3):
A shared understanding of Crisis Management across Europe
The shared understanding in Crisis Management across Europe has been enhanced by the development of a variety of outcomes:
- Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE)
- DRIVER+ Terminology
- CEN Workshop Agreements (CWA) and New Work Item Proposal
In addition, a pan-European network of Centres of Expertise (CoE) has been established, and the CoE toolkit has been developed to support organisations in becoming a CoE.
- Pan-European Centre of Expertise and CoE toolkit
These results will be described in more detail below.
2. A pan-European Test-bed for Crisis Management capability development
The DRIVER+ Test-bed comprises the following main components, which are described in more detail below: Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM), Trial Guidance Tool (TGT), Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI), Societal Impact Assessment Framework, and the Training Module.
2.1 Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM)
Crisis management (CM) organisations often face difficulties in assessing the potential impact of a change in their sociotechnical setup for several reasons, for instance the lack of adequate methodological know-how to assess innovative solutions. Investments in new, but inappropriate sociotechnical solutions, not only produce significant costs, but also have negative impacts for the operational performance of response organisations. Changes may be brought about by different types of solutions, such as new software or new training or workflow processes, each adopted with the aim to improve certain functions or activities. For example, the use of an app for managing volunteers (compared to legacy systems and procedures) can be assessed in a trial on the basis of key performance indicators.
Assessing the impact of any kind of change is not a trivial task, as it points to both capability development and to the identification of innovation. This is why we need trials. Trials are of interest for people dealing with research and innovation who would like to test some new solutions, for practitioners in the field who have identified a problem in daily operations and are motivated to initiate the process of assessing solutions, for experts working in coordination centres who consider to participate in trial-like activities, and allows solution providers to collect user feedback in order to improve their solutions.
A trial has an objective and needs to be structured. It also implies a co-creative approach and an open mind. Workshops and tools are essential, as several iterations (especially for preparation) are usually needed. Trials are evolving processes: they grow “in the making”, like a handcrafted artefact. Time should be devoted to adjust the design. Key decisions must be taken in agreement with different stakeholders that need to be identified. The success of a trial then clearly depends on its design: a robust design will lead you to find appropriate answers to your needs. This trial guidance methodology provides step-by-step guidelines, a list of roles and responsibilities, tools and methods to perform a trial through a clear, structured and co-creative approach.
The Trial Guidance Methodology has been applied in all DRIVER+ Trials and the Final Demonstration. The final version in the form of a Handbook (https://tgm.ercis.org/) is the result of a long journey which started well before the first Trial.
The “soil” in which the methodology has grown until final maturity has been at the same time rich and arduous. It is worth considering that the Handbook is the result of a long process that started with the lessons learned from experiments carried out in the former DRIVER project. Back then, the starting point was the Concept Development & Experimentation (CD&E) approach. Some significant elements of this approach have been retained and adapted and the term “Trial” was considered more appropriate in the context of DRIVER+.
The CD&E was adjusted from DRIVER experiments to DRIVER+ Trials, especially – but not only – because of the settings in which Trials are carried out (not laboratory-like settings). The dynamic nature of practitioners’ realities is key and it is “embedded” in the Trial design: gaps are identified by practitioners and included in realistic scenarios in which promising solutions are trialled. The positivistic approach was abandoned in favour of a more practitioner-oriented approach to capture the impact of trialled solutions on the actual Crisis Management (CM) performance.
Not only was the CD&E adjusted, but a solid base for Trials was ensured through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that highlighted the need to develop a mixed-research methodology and a structured step-by-step guidance to assess innovations. These three sources of knowledge, the CD&E the knowledge base coming from the state of the art (SotA) and the past DRIVER experiences, were the pillars on which the design of the TGM was based.
The shift from DRIVER to DRIVER+ was the preparatory soil to conceive the methodological approach. During the preparation phase of the first Trial, there were no hands-on experiences to rely on, except for the supporting activities necessary to ensure a robust Trial design and for the Trial-like activities described in the literature. This was the moment in which the TGM was an in its embryonic phase: the efforts were mainly put in developing the strong foundations mentioned above, than in communicating contents in a user-friendly way.
After the first Trial, two aspects became clear: 1. the amount of support needed to apply the TGM was consistent and necessary in all phases, and 2. the format used was not appropriate. The TGM team decided to go beyond the DRIVER+ deliverable-template between Trial 1 and Trial 2 but it was only after the latter, that it was possible to re-think and re-work the methodology. Re-working did not entail coming up with a brand new approach. Instead, it entailed “connecting the dots”: the TGM was the glue of the pan-European Test-bed puzzle and it should have been explained and understood in that context. Many questions emerging from Trial Committee members were key in this regard: methods, tools and examples should have been described in a less fragmented way and lessons learned from Trials should have been reflected more explicitly in the output.
This is the moment in which the Handbook came into play. The requests from the Trial committee members were loud and clear: a CM practitioner-friendly format was unavoidable at this stage. The first version of the Handbook was released in December 2018 and entailed an amount of effort which was only partly foreseen by the TGM team. Releasing guidelines implies making content-driven choices while having in mind a design that facilitates the understanding of key messages. In light of this challenge, the TGM was basically re-written. The anatomy remained, up to a certain extent, the same but the structural organisation needed a new nervous system to transmit information in the “right” way: what, when how and why. To fine-tune the output, the TGM team decided to adopt “small iteration cycles” which consisted in monthly improvements of the Handbook. This resulted in the release of intermediate 10 versions (from December 2018 to October 2019).
Some of the versions implied only small changes (for instance, including an example or improving checklists), others implied major adjustments (new design or new descriptions of the technical tools of the Test-bed). To keep track of revisions and needs for improvements, the TGM developers used a ticketing system in a collaboration tool (Trello) that proved to be beneficial to prioritize revision items. The benefits of this approach were two-fold:
- Comments and suggestions from internal partners were included as revision items to be addressed in each monthly version. In doing so, DRIVER+ partners contributed directly to the refinement of the output and had a ready-made, improved Handbook every month.
- An inclusive and holistic approach was ensured. The process of developing a mature output entails a great amount of flexibility and willingness to take steps back and even detours, if necessary.
While the first three versions of the Handbook were shared only among consortium partners, from the fourth version on (March 2019), the Handbook was made available on the website. This turned to be very helpful as it facilitated dissemination and at same time enabled to collect feedback “in the making”.
Discussing the methodology with non-project partners was key to grasp the strength and pitfalls. Actively seeking for feedback was crucial to assess expectations and reflect upon the applicability of the TGM well beyond DRIVER+ Trials. Notwithstanding a certain degree of maturity of an overall methodological approach that was trialled together with potentially innovative solutions, the final version of the Handbook is a starting point to assess in a robust way potential “game changers” in the field of crisis management.
The TGM has been considered as important to strengthen the capabilities of CM organisations since it is grounded in the practitioners’ realities and it is as much pragmatic as possible and as much comprehensive as necessary to allow for a robust evaluation of socio-technical solutions.
2.2 Trial Guidance Tool (TGT)
The Trial Guidance Tool (TGT) is a web-based software tool developed to support trial owners and high-level crisis managers in the implementation of the TGM through the trial phases (https://pos.driver-project.eu/en/gt/trial). It is derived directly from the TGM and it assures that the practitioner’s needs together with trial objectives, are met by following the six steps defined in the preparation phase. The TGT allows also the validation of each steps’ outcome, ensuring that they are followed as intended. Given the fact that TGM by its nature is a complex subject, effective and successful implementation requires systematic guidance that the tool provides.
The TGT is also a knowledge database containing the results of the DRIVER+ systematic literature research (SLR) as well as lessons learned from the previous trials used for future reference. The tool evolves and improves during the course of the project, and it aims to become the ultimate support tool in all trial phases for future generations of crisis managers.
The TGT aims to simplify the identification of operational (real life) crisis management problems by offering a list of pre-defined gaps stored in the database that can be reused, or it gives support for defining new ones. Each gap is related to CM functions which are also a part of solution descriptions, stored in the Portfolio of Solutions, allowing integration between the tools.
The TGT gives examples of trial objectives and helps the users in defining them. The tool offers examples of “do’s” and “don’ts” gained from experience in the past, and it helps with formulating structured and pragmatic data collection plans for evaluating trial results by providing ad hoc templates. It also allows users to formulate trial scenarios and stores them in the tool for future reference.
The search and matching function based on CM functions taxonomy, is designed to help identifying potential solutions from previously identified gaps to be adjusted in a trial. In addition, the tool introduces test cases which can be defined and shared across trials, to help CM practitioners in fulfilling trial objectives and answering research questions. Trial owners, together with their teams, can use the tool simultaneously to improve their collaboration.
The TGT also stores lessons learned from each trial, which can be accessed to foster common understanding of crisis management across Europe. A pdf export function is one of the core functionalities that the tool provides, which allows data to be extracted from the TGT directly to the trial action plan. Integrated help will accompany the user on each step and will provide support and examples for what needs to be done. In the long term, the TGT aims to allow systematic and guided procedures to assess potentially innovating solutions.
2.3 Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI)
In a trial, one or more innovative solutions are used by the participants and assessed in the context of a simulated crisis. For a useful assessment, the test-bed offers several tools for support and a common information space to share messages between solutions, and with legacy systems. Additionally, multiple simulators can be connected to create a realistic, yet fictive incident environment.
Besides using it for trials, the same technical infrastructure and tooling can also be used in day-to-day CM practice for training, exercises and assessments of personnel and organisation in a realistic, yet fictitious controlled context.
All components are available on github.com/DRIVER-EU as open source software (MIT license), but can also be obtained from the docker hub. This means the components can be easily downloaded, installed, used and adapted free of charge.
To facilitate the execution of trials, the infrastructure has the following functionalities and interfaces available to the trial staff (i.e. trial owner, evaluation coordinator, technical coordinator, observers and assisting technicians) to prepare and execute the trial:
- The technical infrastructure allows for connecting solutions and legacy systems alike, such that they can share messages with each other inside the common information space (CIS). For instance, a drone can provide imagery or the location of victims and share them via the CIS with a common operational picture application.
- The technical infrastructure also allows to simulators to be connected together, such that they can simulate an incident and feed the simulated incident to the solutions and legacy systems. This is done by using the common simulation space (CSS) and the CIS-CSS gateways. For example, a flooding simulator can share the simulated flooding in the CIS, so the traffic simulator will not route traffic in that area. Via the CIS-CSS gateway, the simulated flood map is provided to the common operational picture application, so they will not dispatch ambulances to that area. The CIS and CSS are both using the open source publish-subscribe streaming platform, Apache.
- In the trial management tool (TMT), several scenarios can be created to assess specific aspects of the trialled solutions. Scenarios consists of multiple storylines and so-called injects, i.e. messages that can either trigger an action in a simulator, a solution, or in a role-player. During execution of the trial, the trial staff uses the TMT to keep track on activation of these storylines and injects.
- In the observer support tool (OST), observer checklists and questionnaires can be created and used by observers and participants during the execution of a trial. Furthermore, the TMT can trigger new checklists and questionnaires. All answers are subsequently shared with the after-action-review tool
- The after-action-review tool (AAR) logs all checklists and questionnaires as well as all messages flowing though the CIS and CSS. This data is stored and made available for evaluation.
The open source nature of the components and the developer documentation provided with it, make it easy for software developers to deploy these components, connect solutions and simulators to the infrastructure and create a fictive crisis scenario and observation templates. For administrators, the infrastructure also offers an admin tool to configure the infrastructure, turn on security, and an extra set of developer tools for the implementation and testing of the trial specific set-up of the technical infrastructure.
2.3.1 Common Information Space (CIS)
The Common Information Space (CIS) is used to facilitate data exchange between solutions (i.e. software tools) in a transparent and reliable way, in order to enhance the collaboration within and the effectiveness of crisis management while using these solutions. Currently used IT systems (i.e. legacy systems also present in the baseline) can also be connected to the CIS, such that these can feed data into solutions (e.g. a first dispatch report) or vice versa, and such that they can be fed with simulator input (e.g. simulated ambulance positions).
Connecting to the CIS is done by using current emergency management data exchange standards, like Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messages, or Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) messages. This facilitates exchange of understandable information between different organizations, even if they use different data formats (syntactical interoperability) and different languages and/or taxonomies (semantic interoperability). Main benefit is that the systems connected to the CIS do not have to adapt to the data formats of other systems, yet can still exchange information with them. If a solution or legacy system is not yet using such data exchange standards, their data inputs or outputs first need to be transformed into common standard formats.
To link up the solutions and legacy systems with simulators, the CIS can be connected to the Common Simulation Space (CSS) via so called CIS-CSS Gateways. Data from the simulators is translated into data that can be understood by the solutions connected to the CIS and requests from the solutions can be relayed back to the simulators. Because they translate specific message types, there may be multiple gateways. These gateways have to be developed trial specific, converting common standard data formats used in the CIS to common simulation data formats used in the CSS. The CIS and CIS-CSS Gateways do not need to have their own visual user-interfaces, since they only convert messages.
Configuration of the CIS and monitoring of its functioning is done via the admin tool, which does provide a visual user-interface to the trial staff. One major aspect of the developed CIS concept is data protection and security, which is considered necessary in order to create trust among the integrated organisations and their systems. This will be achieved by a trusted registration process for all organisations and an encapsulation of all messages exchanged via the CIS.
2.3.2 Common Simulation Space (CSS)
The trial participants and the solutions and legacy systems connected to the common information space (CIS) typically require information from a fictitious crisis (e.g. number of resources present at a certain dispatch location, or the detailed information of victims at the incident scene). The Common Simulation Space (CSS) is the component within the test-bed technical infrastructure that provides a framework for simulators to jointly generate and maintain a simulation world needed for the solutions (and legacy systems) and the participants to get a sufficiently realistic impression of the fictitious crisis for them to manage.
Dependent on the trial scenario, simulators are to be selected, based on:
- Whether solutions or legacy systems need data from the simulated crisis, which they cannot get from other solutions or legacy systems (e.g. solution fed with a simulated flood status).
- Whether participants need extra information about the simulated crisis (e.g. eye-level view of the crisis, simulated by a virtual reality application or by staging this by physical items on a live-exercise terrain).
- Whether information in the scenario needs to be pre-calculated / pre-simulated for realism (e.g. a realistic wildfire progression).
The Common Simulation Space allows multiple simulators to focus on their part of maintaining the current state of the simulated world (i.e. the simulated truth of the incident and the world around it, for instance a flooding simulator keeping track of the progression of a flood through a region and a resource simulator keeping track of the positions of multiple ambulances). In order to communicate state changes with other simulators inside the CSS, self-created communication messages are allowed inside this space. This is different from the messages being sent over the CIS, because the CIS is more aligned with current emergency management data exchange standards.
To direct the simulated world towards a desired scenario relevant for the trial, the CSS is connected to the trial management tool, which can send out messages to change the simulated world i.e. injects directly processed by simulators. For example, to initiate the dike breach, let a container explode, or drive 10 ambulances to the incident scene, etc.
Simulators all have their own data model of how they represent the simulated world. The CSS allows these simulators to agree on a communication form that the simulators understand to create and maintain a jointly simulated world. In this way, a shared perceived truth is offered to the solutions, to be used in further emergency management decision making. However, due to an incorrect observation, miscommunication or a failing sensor/solution, the perceived truth can be different from the simulated truth. Filters to create a different perceived truth can be implemented in the CSS-CIS Gateways, restricting participants from getting the correct information out of a simulator. So whereas trial/exercise staff can see all information of in the simulators, participants may only be able to see part of that information or may deliberately receive incorrect information.
2.3.3 Trial Management Tool (TMT)
In order to assess solutions during a trial, one or more scenarios are created in the TMT by CM experts and trial staff. Each scenario controls the simulation time (start, stop, pause), and specifies what is happening during the trial, so the solutions can be properly evaluated, and the trial objectives are met. In a scenario, multiple storylines can be created, each containing one or more injects, i.e. messages to simulators, solutions and role-players.
During the trial execution, those messages influence the scenario. For example, the TMT can send a message to a traffic simulator to create an incident at a certain location, or it could send a common alerting protocol message to a command & control application. Additionally, the TMT can send messages to role-players, so they can make a call or play a non-participating command centre. The trial staff can also send messages earlier or later, or resend them, offering a great level of control over the trial.
Creating a scenario in the TMT can be compared by creating a new project. However, instead of managing a project by creating subprojects, work packages and tasks, a trial scenario (=> project) consists of storylines (=> subprojects), acts (=> work packages) and injects (=> tasks, like a simple message). And whereas in a project, you assign resources, in the TMT you assign simulators, role players and observers (=> resources).
A scenario is created while preparing the trial and is executed during the trial. And like a project manager, controlling the sequence of the tasks during the lifetime of a project, the trial staff is also able to control the sequence of inject/messages during the lifetime of a scenario. For example, a scenario may specify that initially water levels rise, next a dyke breaks and a flooding starts. In parallel, a traffic accident causes an ammonia cloud to threaten a part of the city. Its output is a time sequence of messages, for example to instruct a simulator to start a flooding, a role player to call 112 or an observer to watch out for a particular use of a solution.
2.3.4 After Action Review (AAR) tool
The AAR tool logs all messages exchanged between the solutions, legacy systems and simulators connected test-bed technical infrastructure and by components within the infrastructure (e.g. observations inputted via the observer support tool), with the purpose to enable a later analysis of the data exchanged during the trial. Apart from being used for a post-analysis, it is also used during a trial execution to monitor the amount and kind of data exchange, in order to check whether all data exchanges are correctly functioning, to check whether the correct data is exchanged at the correct moment during scenario execution and to check whether observations are being stored.
The detailed logging of all formats, sources and destinations, all marked with time-stamps, allows the technical staff to sort, filter and inspect the messages. The output of the message logging can be viewed on a list, on a timeline or as a sequence diagram. This enables several options for a visual analysis about which components have exchanged which data with each other.
2.3.5 Observer Support Tool (OST)
The observer support tool records all observations from the observers digitally, so they can be analysed during and after the trial. To collect feedback, the OST also provides the ability for participants and trial staff to fill in questionnaires, directly after (a part/episode of) the trial is executed.
The OST consists of a web application for the observers that is typically run from a tablet. The same application can also be accessed in a browser on a desktop computer, a laptop or a mobile device, for instance for participants to fill in the questionnaires and for the evaluation coordinator to prepare the trial specific observation templates (i.e. checklists) and questionnaires. Furthermore, a server is running to manage all checklists and questionnaires and record all answers. This server is connected to the trial-management-tool, such that the correct checklists/questionnaires are available at the applicable moments during execution of the trial. All collected observation and questionnaire data is thereafter shared with the after-action-review tool, such that it is centrally stored for evaluation.
The functionalities of the observer support tool within each phase are:
- Preparation phase: a) definition of trial episodes (i.e. parts of trial in which different phenomena are expected), b) definition of roles in the trial (e.g. observer in room A, participant type B), c) definition of the observation templates (i.e. checklists and questionnaires) which are composed of one or more questions, and d) assignment of observation templates to roles and to trial stages.
- Execution phase: a) definition of the data collection session during testing, dry runs or the trial, by creating user accounts and inviting the users, b) assignment of users to roles, c) supervision of the data collection process, d) changing the trial episode, manually or via the trial-management tool, e) sending currently applicable observation templates and messages to roles (i.e. users), and f) showing how many answers to observation templates are inputted by users and showing these answers.
- Evaluation phase: a) exporting the answers inputted in observation templates to CSV format, b) sharing these answers with the after-action-review tool, and c) reviewing these answers.
2.3.6 Admin tool and security
The admin tool is necessary to configure the Kafka layers of the CIS and CSS and the CIS-CSS gateways and to configure all adapters used by solutions, legacy system, simulators, trial management tool, observer support tool and after action review tool to connect to the CIS or CSS. When performing tests and during execution of a trial, the admin tool provides an interface to monitor whether all components are well connected, to specify the types of messages being used and to collect all errors and warnings. When all lights are green in the admin tool’s user-interface, all components are well connected.
Additionally, via the admin tool, you can secure the infrastructure, by creating certificates. These certificates will assure that only the certified solutions, systems, simulators and components can access only the for them applicable Kafka layers within the CIS and CSS. Adding of security certificates is especially important in case an online technical infrastructure is used, for example when assessing web-based solution, or when the IT-network of the hosting platform is vulnerable to external parties listening in to the trial.
The Admin tool provides pre-defined configuration defining a set of solutions, layers and gateways that can be selected. It also offers the possibility to enable/disable security for the testbed so that only authorized solutions can connect.
2.4 Societal Impact Assessment Framework
The need for innovative solutions to deal with crisis situations stems from the fact that crisis management as such is taking place in complex and dynamic societies. This complexity is caused by several factors, such as increased digitalisation and the growing movement of people across borders and countries. The emergence of new solutions to tackle new and complex challenges also means that the solutions we come up with can have consequences that are more complex than before. These consequences – or, in other words, the impact – can be positive and desired (such as increased efficiency), but there might also be impacts that are negative or unintended. When talking about societal impact in this context, we mean something different than how well the solutions work. A new solution to a challenge can be very efficient in producing the desired effects, but at the same time have tremendous negative impacts on the society of which it is part. For example, the aim of a SIA is not to assess whether a crowd-tasking solution would make response activities more time-efficient, but how a crowd-tasking solution can be deployed to foster a culture of trust in society so that communities feel safe when they are in a crisis situation.
The objective of doing a SIA is to ensure that the implementation of CM solutions maximises its benefits and minimises its burdens, especially those burdens borne by people. Burdens and benefits may not be directly measurable or quantifiable and are often hard to consider exactly for this reason. Nonetheless, they are important, and by identifying potential societal impacts in advance, in particular two advantages are evident:
- Better decisions can be made about which solutions should be employed, and how they should be employed.
- Mitigating actions can be implemented to minimise the harm and maximise the benefits from a specific solution.
In the larger societal context, by achieving these advantages, other benefits include positive impacts such as accountability and acceptability:
- Accountability means that CM participants are in various ways responsible for what they do and should be able to give a satisfactory justification for it.
- Acceptability of solutions, since crisis managers depend on the society accepting the CM solutions, especially if the solutions are participatory in the sense that they require interactions with the public.
Acceptability also relates to issues of sustainability, since solutions that are developed and implemented with the broader society in mind have a larger chance of avoiding controversy and being adopted, in addition to making the implementation more efficient and effective.
A SIA can be carried out in many different contexts, and for many different purposes, which makes it difficult to give a universal definition of what it entails. The starting point for the SIA Framework developed in the DRIVER+ project is that an assessment of what a certain solution does to a society, means thinking about how it impacts the people in it. While some categories of impact are easier to identify and mitigate than others, there is no easy checklist to identify potential societal issues. For example, privacy-related impacts might be easier to recognise due to high public attention of the topic and to the emergence of European-wide legislation. On the other hand, the impact of certain solutions on societal values addresses impacts that exceed calculability, not least because most of these impacts are long-term and often unintended.
While SIA can be challenging to do in everyday CM operations due to a lack of time and efforts, the TGM facilitates SIA as a natural step in preparing a trial. In order to understand the concept of SIA better, let’s use the example of trial Poland. This trial dealt with the following research question: How can cross-border resource management be supported through sociotechnical solutions during multi-stakeholder long-term rescue operations? In other words, which technologies and/or methodologies can provide an added value for rescue operations? When we evaluate a given solution, be it a new technology or a new methodology, we always need to step back and wonder if, together with the added value it may bring, there are also new problems that it generates. When setting up a trial, issues related to the societal impact of our activities occupy a central role. This is because we recognise that there is a mutual relationship between technical objects, the natural environment and social practice. The technologies do not operate in a vacuum; rather, they exist in a social context that is impacted by them in different ways.
Relevant steps to take for assessing societal impacts are:
A) Identify stakeholder groups/communities: the first step would be to identify the stakeholders and the community that could potentially be impacted by the implementation of the solution. Here, relevant questions to ask would start with “how could solution X with all its functionalities have an impact on the stakeholder groups or communities included in this context?”
B) Collect background information: if relevant, collect reference information covering key social issues of the impacted communities such as community history, culture and key events that have shaped the development of the community. Are there known vulnerabilities in the community? Specific social challenges? Who are the major industrial actors?
C) Get an overview of legislation and policies: provide an overview of relevant national/ EU legislation and policies that complement the mitigation measures (Step 5) that are directly related to the trial. For trial Poland, the maps generated by the drone can be viewed and analysed in the dedicated geoportal or any GIS environment already utilised by CM institutions. Yet the images that those maps were based upon may raise issues of privacy for individual people and their property; therefore, relevant legal or regulatory considerations would be for example data protection law or local airspace regulation for the use of drones. This step is important for making an assessment, and depending of the trial setup, it could even be relevant to contemplate whether CM activities might challenge other human rights (for example when dealing with vulnerable populations). The added value for CM generated by the maps cannot automatically overrule individual rights of other people.
D) Identify and predict impacts: This is the main part of the SIA, where a structured assessment, based on the information acquired in the previous steps takes place. The full aim is to identify potential direct social impacts and try to predict their significance, duration and extent. The SIA criteria listed in the framework should be used to structure this thinking, but the idea is not to say something about each and every criteria. In some cases the impacts may be rather obvious, and isolated maybe to issues of privacy and data protection, in which case only that one criteria might be relevant; yet, in other cases the societal issues might be more complex. In trial Poland, for example, we used both simulated tabletop and field exercises, which required the use of dedicated observers, who recorded and documented the actions. For evaluating this part of the trial, different data was collected, such as questionnaires filled in by the observers and practitioners. As an example of potential societal impact, the personal data emanating from these questionnaires could have implications for the ones involved, in the sense that if the identification of a firefighter or a practitioner is revealed, this can compromise the depth of their answers.
E) Describe mitigating measures and follow up: In order to reduce the risk of negative unintended impacts, and/or to increase the possibility for positive impact, a list of measures should be made. The list should be based on the impacts identified in the previous step and could include actions such as providing extra follow ups for volunteers, establishing rapport with local community leaders, engaging with the communities, and sharing more information about the activity/solution/trial. A plan should be made to describe how the mitigating measures will be followed up. For trial Poland for example, the anonymity of the participants in the trial was an issue; i.e. that the anonymity of an observer should be preserved to ensure independence. Therefore, specific measures regarding both informed consent and anonymity had to be put in place, so that this data collection could take place. A mitigating measure relevant for the issue of departing assumptions would include thorough deliberation regarding the scenario selection, and carefully defined research questions.
2.5 Training Module (TM)
The aim of the Training Module (TM) is to train and instruct all persons involved how they can best organize their own Trials (https://www.sisekaitse.ee/en/why-trial-guidance-methodology-and-training-module). This means that the TM should explain how to make best use of the pan-European DRIVER+ Test-bed:
- How to use the DRIVER+ Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM).
- How to use the supportive methods and tools.
- To make reference to the pan-European network of fellow Test-bed users and organizations that can deliver Test-bed support.
These topics are also described in the TGM Handbook. After reading the TGM Handbook and completion of the TM, learners should be able to prepare, execute and evaluate a high-quality Trial themselves, potentially but not necessarily with support from DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise (CoE). These Trials can be small-scale (e.g. only one type of socio-technical solution) or rather complex (e.g. assessing multiple solutions in a cross-border context).
The learning content is split in several sessions, which are each be divided again in sub-sessions. This division makes it possible to train each topic in an achievable time-frame, making it feasible for the target groups of learners to go through each topic (i.e. sub-session) step-by-step and spread over time (e.g. during free evenings at home or during some allocated hours at work). This division in sub-sessions is also useful as different types of persons involved in organization of a Trial will have different needs or topics they are most interested in.
Because the TM is aimed to support future Trial organizers and thus future Test-bed users (i.e. the TM’s learners), one can distinguish two main categories of training target groups for the TM. The TM’s primary training target group are Trial organisers, being, who could be employed as:
A) High-level crisis managers – as they have first-hand experience in encountering CM gaps directly, or to experience the cascading effects or lessons identified of these gaps. They also are in a strategic position to trigger a process to search for a solution for these gaps. Therefore they are the most logical spot to kick-start a project to organize a Trial. To be able to run this well, they should have a good understanding of the TGM and how to work best with it (in a team).
B) Senior CM field practitioners – as they have multiple years of experience working in the field and/or in command/coordination centres, they have first-hand experience in current CM gaps, especially at the operational level. As such they are foreseen to be a logical spot at which the concept of a Trial emerges (e.g. “We often experience issues A or B in these types of incidents: can’t we try out how to solve this best?”). Therefore, they should at minimal be able to participate as practitioner expert in the committee organizing a Trial or they even need to be able to use the TGM fully.
C) CM policy makers – because they are involved in the development of new policies, often requiring the implementation of new socio-technological solutions and requiring an assessment of new policies and solutions piloted/implemented. Therefore, they need to understand the concept of a Trial and be able to (manage a team to) follow the TGM.
D) CM procurement officers – because they could use the TGM as objective assessment method for new socio-technological solutions to acquire. Therefore, they need to understand the objective character of Trials and the TGM and how to apply this in their procurement processes.
E) CM innovators – usually working within a CM organisation, their job is to chase CM innovation. To assess the success of these innovations, all aspects of the Test-bed are most useful for them. To implement and use it well, they should have a full understanding of the Test-bed.
F) Researchers in the field of CM – as these are working on their independent research in CM and innovations to solve these, or because they can be involved by a CM organisation to assist them in innovation research. These persons can be found to work at (applied) universities and public research organisations. They should therefore have a full understanding especially of the TGM and supportive tools and methods. Because of their research background, they probably have or should be drawn to different focus areas within the TM.
G) Consultants in the field of CM – because they can be involved by a CM organisation to assist them in innovation assessment, for instance as data analyst, evaluation expert or as toolset implementer. These persons can be found to work at public research organisations, and commercial consultancy companies. Dependent on the expertise for which they are hired, they need to be able to use certain aspects of the Test-bed (e.g. to prepare and execute the evaluation approach, or to select and implement simulations required to run a realistic Trial scenario).
Next to this primary target group, there are also other stakeholders in a Trial, who are the TM’s secondary training target groups:
- Practitioners (not being the main Trial organizers) – because they are needed as players during the Trial runs and/or as observers. Therefore, they must understand what a Trial is and particularly what is expected from them to play or observe during a Trial run.
- Solution providers – because their solution is being trialled. They must have a good understanding of what a Trial is, have a basic understanding of the TGM, and must understand the process to prepare, execute and evaluate a Trial well such that they can cooperate effectively. In addition, this enables them to better provide suggestions on how to best assess the performance of their solution during a Trial.
- Developers and technicians (for any kind of socio-technical solution) – because they are needed to organize a Trial, they must have a basic understanding of what a Trial is and the TGM, and they must have in-depth understanding of what the Test-bed technical infrastructure can bring them, how to implement it and of the technical and logistical preparation processes. They can work for solution providers, but also for CM organisations hosting a Trial or research organisations.
Because of the heterogeneous training target groups and the different needs they each have, the TM uses a blended approach by combining e-learning and a contact-phase. Using a blended approach means that the TM will consist of both an e-learning phase, followed by a face-to-face (or potentially webinar) instructor-led contact-phase. The e-learning part is used to convey knowledge, create comprehension (i.e. learners not only knowing about a certain topic, but also able to explain it to others) and facilitate a basic level of analysis and synthesis capabilities via interactive assignments (for instance, the ability to select and detail out those CM gaps applicable to a Trial in the learner’s own CM organisation). The e-learning is mostly automatic with clear content based on the learner’s profile.
The TM provides skill-based learning in order to enhance transfer of learning, meaning that, after completion of the TM, learners can in principle organize a Trial themselves, independently or with support from experts. To develop these skills, not only knowledge-transfer is needed, but learners should also have the ability to practice these skills and critically reflect on their performance and even have their performance assessed by the expert instructors. Therefore, next to the e-learning, a contact-phase consisting of a collection of TGM-expert-led sessions is offered. Although this requires instructor manpower for every contact-phase course, this investment is deemed valuable as especially for the more complex methodological steps in the TGM, a face-to-face contact-phase is regarded as the best method for practice, reflection and assessment.
Learners should first complete those parts of the e-learning aimed at their future role (e.g. Trial organiser, evaluation consultant or solution developer). The succeeding contact-phase is set-up in a modular fashion, such that the modules applicable to a specific group of learners can be selected and tailored to fit the needs of this group best (e.g. for a group of new TGM experts at a Centre of Expertise/CoE, or a group of developers employed at several solution providers). This phase builds on the e-learning by providing more (group) assignments to improve the learner’s analysis and synthesis capabilities. For instance, this can be a multi-disciplinary group assignment to work out and critically reflect on research questions, in which a TGM expert facilitates this assignment and provides expert advice and feedback.
Based on the choice for a blended approach, the profiles of the training audiences and the contents of each sub-session, several training delivery methods are implemented.
For e-learning:
- Video – Short video clip, usually <10 min., fit for introducing a topic or providing an example in a very appealing method via 1-directional knowledge transfer.
- E-lecture – Video recording of a (real) lecture by one or two presenters, intended for explaining a topic in a basic up to very detailed level (i.e. 1-directional knowledge transfer).
- Presenter slides with voice-over – similar as e-lecture, but without a video capture of the presenter. Usually containing a scripted, professional voice-over.
- Video interviews – a scripted video of 5-30 minutes between interviewer and one or more persons being an expert or having first-hand experience in the topic to be trained. Often used to convey example cases via 1-directional knowledge and experience transfer.
- Explanimation – animated video providing a very appealing, concise explanation of a topic via 1-directional knowledge transfer.
- Tutorial videos – (screen capture) videos with voice-over for explaining how to use physical products and software applications and for providing a step-by-step guide to resolve issues with these (i.e. 1-directional practical ability-transfer).
- Checklists, user manuals and other written and visual documentation – providing written explanations (i.e. 1-directional knowledge transfer) and for providing reference to more advanced topics or to topics/tools/methods used less often.
- Quizzes and tests – come in the form of a single question up to a full list of questions to answer, thereby to check the level of knowledge or ability transfer. Providing direct, automatic feedback.
- H5P.org interactivity – this is a specific open source technology to create interactive questions, quizzes and tests. H5P.org technology can be implemented in YouTube, Moodle (i.e. open source e-learning platform also used by EASS) and Drupal (i.e. open-source content management system on which the TGT and PoS websites are based).
- Individual assignment – complex question/assignment than possible via a quiz, usually graded by an instructor (i.e. human-in-the-loop grading system).
- Take-home assignment – similar to individual assignments but intended for more complex tasks requiring a learner more than five minutes to complete. Instructors also need considerable time to grade the submitted answers/reports.
- Discussion forum – communication medium for sharing questions, answers, practical advices, submitted (take-home) assignment and feedback amongst learners and between learners and instructors.
- Achievements – awards granted to learners to mark progression in the e-learning, indicating level of knowledge and ability transfer and for motivating learners.
For the contact-phase:
- Presentation or lecture – similar to e-lectures provided via e-learning, but in this case with instructor being face-to-face with learners. In the core being 1-directional knowledge transfer.
- Question & answer session (Q&A) – a face-to-face session between learners and an instructor fit for providing tailored answers to questions that have arisen at learners.
- Checklists, manuals, leaflets and other documentation – completely similar to these types of documentation provided via e-learning.
- Individual assignment – similar to individual assignment provided via e-learning.
- Group assignment – fit for triggering joint (multi-disciplinary) work on an assignment. Especially good for topics into analysis and synthesis and for triggering joint discussions amongst several learners.
- Plenary discussion – fit for jointly – meaning both learners and instructor(s) – enriching the knowledge and ability transfer by posing questions or statements, followed by jointly discussing about the different aspects/answers to these.
- Test / Exam – similar to a test in the e-learning, but providing more time for learners to complete it and providing instructors to observe the learners during completion (e.g. observe group behaviour or monitor for improper passing strategies).
3. Portfolio of Solutions (PoS)
The Portfolio of Solutions (https://pos.driver-project.eu/en/PoS/solutions) is a web-based online platform that aims to document all relevant information regarding the solutions in the crisis management across Europe in such a way that different stakeholders can easily access this information. It also aims to standardise the language through the use of shared vocabulary of pre-defined taxonomies, so that for example, CM professionals, solution owners, CM practitioners and trial owners can work on the same level, and use the same terms, making the collaboration much easier. The trial guidance methodology describes a six step approach - an iterative process for trial preparation, where the last step includes selection of trial relevant solutions. The main role of the PoS in this step is to allow trial owners, and CM practitioners to select solutions that are going to be used and evaluated in the trial and that are related to the defined trial gaps, which are linked to CM functions. In other words, the PoS aims to help in the solution selection process, by offering the information on which CM functions are addressed by the solutions, so that they can be matched with the defined gaps.
Another important function of the PoS, is to propose a marketplace where providers can advertise their innovative solutions in the field of crisis management, and improve the chance of them being selected for a trial, or being used by CM practitioners. It also allows description of potential use cases, to give more insights on the actual use of the solutions.
The search functionality of the PoS enables an easy search through a large number of solutions, maintaining the high level of relevancy, by applying the correct filters that narrow the search results. A goal for the future is to make the PoS project independent, so that information about potential solutions for ongoing real-life crisis management problems is always available when needed.
The portfolio of solutions provides the possibility of describing a solution in a standardised way. The solution owner is able to state in which innovation stage the solution is currently in, what readiness level it has, which crisis cycle management phase is targeting, and which crisis size it covers. It also gives the opportunity to provide information on which standards are supported by the solution, and to upload and store all documentation regarding the solution, such as manuals, installation/ configuration guides etc. Solution providers can also describe use cases in which CM functions are addressed. Other than that, PoS allows references to be added to both internal DRIVER+ trials and external experiments, to give additional information on how the solution performed in real-life situations.
For the trial owners and CM practitioners, the PoS’s search function allows easy discovery of relevant solutions by filtering all information provided by the solution owner and by clearly stating which CM functions are being addressed. The solution overview page of the PoS is based on search API which implements deep search algorithms that allow searching through all components of the described solution for relevant terms, delivering fast, user-specified search and also gives the possibility to filter the solutions by CM functions, allowing easy matching with trial gaps. The PoS also implements a PDF export function to allows easy information extraction for further usage. This functionality can be combined with the filtering function that the tool offers to generate PDFs containing user-specified information, that being a description of a single solution, or for example, description of all solutions that address the same CM functions. Integrated help functionality is designed to help both solution owners in describing their solution in the best possible way and to help trial owners in selecting relevant solutions to be benchmarked in a trial.
Tutorials have been created to guide users while using the PoS website. These tutorials can be found at two different places. First, a tutorial webpage is available to all users at the following URL: https://pos.driver-project.eu/en/about/tutorials. This webpage contains all existing tutorials. Second, tutorials can also be found as a contextual help in several webpages where it was considered relevant for guiding the users. For example, the “solutions tutorial” can be found on the webpages displaying information about solutions. When creating or editing a tutorial, the webpages in which it will appear as a contextual help can be configured. Finally, most of the tutorials are interactive tutorials created with the H5P technology (https://h5p.org/) and more precisely with the “branching scenario” feature, which is included in the PoS administration platform. Contextual help is designed to assist the users to understand what they are expected to do, whereas the solution/Trial validation functions are designed to help them understand if their contributions are complete and self-consistent. This is particularly important for the Trials, which have complex data models and cross-referencing between parts of the Trial description.
The PoS is designed to minimize the quality assurance overhead on the site owners (administrators/editors), while maximizing the content quality. This is achieved in the following way. First, the site membership is limited to CM professionals and stakeholders. Each user must register with his or her full name and the company email and provide a short sentence explaining who they are. This information is manually double-checked by the site owner before enabling the user account and all the accounts where the user identity and affiliation cannot be established are rejected. Second, every solution that the user publishes on the PoS is linked with their user account as well as with their company profile. This is seen as a significant incentive for the users to behave professionally and publish high quality content. The third important part of the QA are email notifications. The following notifications have been implemented: a) Site editors will receive email notifications for newly published trials and solutions, b) Site editors will also receive email notifications when some user requests help or reports an issue by clicking on the “Helpdesk” button, c) Users will receive periodic notifications about validations errors, d) Users will also receive notifications about changes in “their” Trials and solutions, and e) Users will receive a request to update their contents after a period specified by the administrator.
The future goal of the PoS is to propose a marketplace where the next generations of CM practitioners will be able to find information related to solutions to fill the existing gaps in crisis management, and also to discover new innovative solutions provided by solution owners for arising problems.
4. Lessons Learned Library (L3)
The objective of the Lessons Learned Library (L3) is to support organisations in sharing, editing, and consulting lessons within the domain of crisis management (CM) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). L3 is especially intended to share lessons across organisations, across sectors, and across countries with the final goal to improve CM and DRR in Europe by learning from each other’s experiences (https://l3crisis.eu).
Lessons may be collected from various types of events: routine, every day operations, crisis situations, training and exercises, experiments and tests, but also from risk management studies or preventive activities. L3 offers a structured approach to develop and improve doctrines, organisations, training, equipment, leadership, personnel and facilities to achieve more effective, efficient and safe operations.
A lesson provides answers to questions such as: What was the situation? What was the impact? What went well in emergency management and is worthwhile to implement? But also: What went wrong, and which improvements are needed? To this purpose, any user can create new events and share their lessons with other emergency management communities in Europe. Since lessons are of varying nature, a filtering mechanism allows users to quickly find relevant information about an event that took place (e.g. a Trial in the DRIVER+ project), about certain types of incidents (e.g. forest fires or bomb attacks), or about specific crisis management functions (e.g. evacuation or situation assessment).
The main functionalities of the L3 are (a) to add and edit crisis events and associated lessons from these events, and (b) to find and consult specific events or lessons. Because the aim of the L3 is to share lessons across the CM community worldwide, the user interface is in English, and lessons are expected to be in English too (although this is not enforced). Since lessons need a context, all lessons belong to an event. Each event can contain one or more lessons, and each lesson is linked to one or more crisis management functions.
An event is described by a summary, including some general data such as type of event (e.g. an incident or an exercise), and its date and place. More detailed information on the incident scenario and CM operations, such as the initial incident and cascading effects, the (potential) impact, a map of the situation, involved organisations, and an overview of critical CM functions that had to be executed. Lessons that have been learned from the event.
A lesson consists of the applicable CM functions during the event, including a description of the perceived positive or negative experiences and their effectiveness. Solutions to improve the CM function based on experiences during the event, including a description of the expected performance improvement and an indication of the expected impact reduction. These lessons are typically captured during the evaluation phase of an event when all required information is available.
5. Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE)
The Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) is a community of practice whose objective is to foster innovation and enhance a shared understanding in the fields of crisis management and Disaster Risk Reduction in Europe (https://www.cmine.eu/). CMINE is creating an umbrella network of stakeholders active in crisis management by linking existing projects, networks and initiatives. By doing so, CMINE reduces fragmentation in the crisis management domain, prompts the generation of ideas and assists in the identification of innovative solutions to improve European resilience.
CMINE provides to its members an online and offline environment to actively engage with other crisis management professionals. It helps them to reflect on current and future challenges while facilitating the uptake of research and innovation by practitioner organisations. Different task groups have been set up to explore approaches to address issues in specific crisis management areas, namely floods, wildfires and volunteer management. The CMINE platform has been designed as a flexible tool, easy to update and inform through collaboration. Its aim is to become a sustainable pan-European platform in support to all professionals involved in crisis management.
The interfacing between the PoS and CMINE was established and is configured in a way that allows for the automatic transfer of solution descriptions from the PoS to CMINE. A prerequisite is the written consent that the solution provider needs to give when registering the solution on the PoS. When this consent is given the following information is transferred via a script written by AIT to the COCP CMINE page “Innovative CM solutions”:
- Name and logo of the solution.
- Name and location of the solution provider.
- Description of the solution.
- Weblink of the solution or solution provider.
- TRL.
In addition to the regular website, the CMINE App has been developed which provides a much easier and quicker access to the main features of the platform and can be downloaded via the Android and Apple Store.
In order to further strengthen the value proposition and therefore the sustainability potential of CMINE it has been decided to upgrade the contract with the platform provider to the “Enterprise package”. This upgrade addresses and reflects the needs of the network of networks that CMINE envisions extremely well. Members of CMINE can:
Create private groups with advanced features to work and exchange information: a) Designate their own admins and manage their group autonomously b) Provide their own port of entry through a customised public homepage, URL and sign-up form, c) Create subcommunities for different chapters or task groups, d) Encourage conversations through a live feed and discussion forums, and e) Store documents in a secure repository.
Raise their profile within the crisis management community: a) Announce news and project milestones, and b) Promote events and manage registrations.
Benefit from, and contribute to, a knowledge and innovation network: a) Join or create task groups that are relevant to your organisation, and b) Share and access best practices and lessons learned
6. DRIVER+ Terminology
In the frame of international research projects, a multitude of actors with different cultural, organizational, national and educational background come together in order to achieve one or more targets. Under such conditions it is essential to ensure a common understanding of the actors, as there is otherwise a high risk of failure in achieving the common goals. Lack of common understanding of centrally applied terms, such as "interoperability" or "information exchange platform" hampers the development of specific processes and consequently also any prototype implementing such a process. Additionally, the naming and defining of newly developed products of the project is needed in order to build a shared understanding of these outcomes. In this light, DRIVER+ decided to establish a project terminology of key terms and associated definitions in order to enhance a common understanding within the project team and to contribute to a shared understanding within the broader crisis and disaster management community within Europe.
A Terminology Working Group (TWG) was established dedicated to identifying central terms applied in the project and to provide suitable definitions for those terms. Relevant terms for the terminology were identified by approaching operative working groups within the project and asking to specify the most relevant terms applied in the documentation of their work. For these terms a systematic search for adequate definitions was executed.
As a starting point for a project terminology an existing terminology, such as UNISDR or ISO 22300 can be used as a basis. From there on the most relevant terms for the project and their definitions can be identified. The first step to establish a basis version of the project terminology is to identify the relevant terms of this initially available list. Next, a process of continuous update of the terminology has to be set up. In almost all cases when an update for specific terms was requested in DRIVER+, this resulted from an input of a project partner or a member of the TWG. The TWG forwarded the request to the Project Coordination Team (PCT), consisting of the project coordinator, the technical coordinator, the external cooperation manager and the quality manager and in case of acceptance of the request the TWG took the following actions:
A) The TWG examined if an adequate definition could be found in UNISDR 2015, ISO 22300 and the ISO database.
B) If one or more adequate definitions were found in these sources, all definitions were proposed to the PCT together with a recommendation for a selection.
C) If no adequate definition was found, other already available sources were examined without giving any ranking to the PCT in case of identification of adequate definitions. These sources were:
- SDSIE 2017: Service de défense, de sécurité et d’intelligence économique, Crisis & disaster management terminology translation.
- IFRC 1991: Code of conduct – International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
- ICRC 2013: Professional standards for Protection Work.
- HM Government 2013: Emergency Response and Recovery Non-statutory guidance accompanying the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
In case all examined sources did not provide any or adequate definitions, additional sources could be examined, or self-defined definitions could be taken. In general, recognized and well accepted definitions were given priority compared to self-defined DRIVER+ definitions. However, although sometimes available definitions were suited for the project purposes, an additional comment to the definition was deemed helpful in order to make the DRIVER+ context more specific. This was done by adding a so-called DRIVER+ note in addition to the definition.
On this basis the DRIVER+ terminology was continuously updated, published on the DRIVER+ public website and included in the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS). Whenever a term of the DRIVER+ terminology is used in the description of a solution, the PoS provides the corresponding definition from the DRIVER+ terminology via mouse over function. The DRIVER+ terminology aims to contribute to a shared understanding in Crisis Management and to be sustainable simultaneously. Therefore, it is also translated in eight languages, i.e. German French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Estonian and Swedish. The translations were done to further increase the mutual understanding. The chosen languages cover a large part of the European Community and help the DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise (CoE) in their activities to share experiences with regards to supporting the capability development and innovation management of European practitioner organisations.
In addition to the project terminology a list of acronyms and abbreviations used in DRIVER+ was established. The catalogue of acronyms and abbreviations was set up in order to foster achievement of a common understanding on names for systems, tools, institutions etc. in the project. Like a terminology a mutually agreed register of abbreviations and acronyms helps to achieve seamless communication in a project and to avoid possible misunderstandings on specific topics. The different lists of acronyms and abbreviations in each deliverable were used as input for the global list available to the project and beyond.
The DRIVER+ terminology consists of 147 published terms and 556 acronyms and abbreviations (July 2020). 17 of 147 definitions are extended by a DRIVER+ note. Most definitions were found in the standardisation documents via the ISO online browsing platform: 16 definitions come from ISO 22300:2018 Security and Resilience – Vocabulary, and 64 definitions from other standards. UNISDR was the source for 9 definitions. 34 definitions are initial DRIVER+ definitions, developed by the project and 24 terms were defined by different sources in the area of CM.
The terminology (terms, definitions) and the list of acronyms and abbreviations are published on the public project website (https://www.driver-project.eu/driver-project/terminology/).
7. CEN Workshop Agreements (CWA) and ISO New Work Item Proposal
With 31 European partners, European standardisation plays an important role in the DRIVER+ standardisation strategy. European standardisation is not only essential for setting new standards within the existing technical committees, furthermore, it provides a possibility for European research projects to transfer project results into a publicly available document called CEN/CENELEC Workshop Agreement. Within the overall project duration, four CEN Workshop Agreements were developed. All CWAs were developed in CEN Workshops in accordance with CEN/CENELEC Guide 29. All four CEN Workshop Agreements cover DRIVER+ identified needs for guidance and standardisation and use DRIVER+ results as a basis and can, therefore, be seen as sustainability tools for the project.
7.1 CEN/WS 100 - CEN Workshop Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM)
Crisis Management is a domain that is constantly confronted with changing environmental influences, varying goals, and partly unstructured processes. Especially in such a dynamically changing and thus challenging domain, it is difficult yet vitally important to continuously identify, assess and finally introduce new innovative solutions to support the decision-makers and operatives in practice. This CWA focuses on the establishment of a methodology to systematically assess such solutions for their applicability in practice. With it, practitioners will be enabled to objectively asses the added value of an innovative solution. It facilitates to improve the dialogue and cooperation between the solution providers and the practitioners that use them. Finally, the methodology will support practitioners in their choice of procurement of the right solutions to fulfil their tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible.
This CWA and the Trial Guidance Methodology introduced within is for CM practitioners. In particular, it is suitable for CM organisations that have identified capability gaps or possible improvement potentials within their processes, practices or procedures. Due to the costs needed to introduce new solutions, the specific requirements on required training, software and workflows as well as the consequently complex interactions between all elements of the socio-technical setup of a CM organization when implementing changed practices, providing specific guidance for the assessment of such solutions is highly beneficial for the affected CM practitioners. This was also realized by CM practitioners and researchers alike during a workshop to identify standardisation potentials at the DRIVER+ General Assembly on 5th September 2018 in Warsaw, which was the initial event starting the standardisation activities.
The scope of the CWA regards the definition of a methodology that enables a systematic and robust assessment of one or more socio-technical solutions (hardware, software, training, procedure, or a mix of those) within a realistic Crisis Management scenario. The target groups of the CWA are CM practitioners concerned with innovation or procurement, public authorities concerned with procurement (or writing tenders), as well as research and development departments in industry and research.
The Trial Guidance Methodology comprises three main phases: preparation, execution and evaluation. Each of these phases consists of a number of further steps, including detailed descriptions for the used processes and methodologies. Besides, the intended CWA comprises the relevant responsibilities to define clear roles of all participants in a solution Trial.
7.2 CEN/WS 099 - CEN Workshop on the Semantic and Syntactical Interoperability for Crisis and Disaster Management
Current and future challenges, due to increasingly severe consequences of natural disasters and terrorist threats, require the development and uptake of innovative solutions that are addressing the operational needs of practitioners dealing with crisis and disaster management. Interviews with more than 50 European crisis and disaster managers on past crisis and disasters revealed interoperability as predominant challenge in European disaster management (1). An electronic questionnaire was used to execute the interviews and the results of the inventory showed that in the majority of examined past disasters, requests of stakeholders were predominantly related to problems of information exchange both on a syntactical as well semantic level. Moreover, a large a diversity of applied solutions as well as standards and procedures was shown. In order to face this challenge of a diversity of solutions and procedures as well as lack of interoperability multiple European research projects, e.g. the DG ECHO project Alpdiris and the FP7 projects EPISECC (607078), SecInCoRe (607832), SECTOR (607821) and Redirnet (607768) as well as DRIVER+ (607798) developed platforms allowing to interface IT solutions from the involved actors (in the case of DRIVER+ the platform is called testbed and is a central infrastructure supporting the execution of Trials). Industrial and research partners both from DRIVER+ as well as external actors decided jointly to specify main recommendations for realizing both syntactical as well as semantic interoperability in the frame of this CWA 17513:2020.
CWA 17513:2020 overall defines recommendations to achieve organizational and cross border interoperability on syntactical and semantic level for crisis and disaster management. The document provides syntactical recommendations on the realization of tool connectors to a platform, standardized protocols, validation of transmitted messages, security issues, message distribution approaches and system resilience. Regarding semantic services recommendations on the establishment of semantic resources as well as the establishment of a semantic mapping and matching are given.
CWA 17513:2020 is dedicated to support both practitioners as well as solution providers in the process of the realization of interoperability between IT solutions designed for the application in the crisis and disaster management domain. Practitioners are people who are qualified or registered to practice a particular occupation in the field of security or civil protection, e.g. crisis managers and responders relating to all disciplines of crisis and disaster management and response. Solution providers are those that develop and supply technological solutions that fulfil the requirements defined in this document, with the goal to improve operational capabilities of practitioners.
In addition, use cases for the application of syntactical and semantic services are given. Layer models are described and examples of concepts and topologies are provided.
In the domain of crisis and disaster management there is an increasing request for organization and border crossing information exchange both on national as well as international level. This CEN Workshop Agreement is therefore dedicated to support both practitioners as well as solution providers in the process of the realization of interoperability between IT solutions designed for the application in the crisis and disaster management domain. The target groups of the document are civil protection authorities, local emergency management authorities (LEMA), fire brigades, police authorities, first responders (e.g. Red Cross, Knights of St. John), actors involved in cross-border operations, military forces involved in crisis and disaster management, critical infrastructure operating forces, companies involved in disaster management and civil protection, and the R&D community.
7.3 CEN/WS 101 - CEN WS Crisis management - Building a Common Simulation Space
Within the world of modelling and simulation, a tendency to provide isolated simulators that work within a very specific domain can be seen. Although this focus on specialized simulators allows increasing the effectiveness of modelling behaviour, as fine-grained as required, it also gives rise to the desire to interconnect multiple simulators together to provide a more generic use of these combined simulators. Interoperability refers to the ability of computerized systems to connect and communicate with one another readily, even if they were developed by widely different manufacturers in different industries.
CWA 17515:2020 defines a technical framework for connecting simulators and supporting tools aiming to facilitate interoperability between multiple stand-alone simulators, in order to jointly create and maintain a common simulation space. It specifies infrastructure and accompanied protocol parameters, common simulation message formats, and a set of services or tools facilitating the common simulation space functionalities. This document is intended to be used by system integrators and developers of individual simulators who jointly want to use an interoperability framework to share (parts of) their own simulation domain with simulators from another domain.
The aim for this CWA is to provide a solid foundation of architectural guidelines to be used for jointly configuring a common simulation space. This CWA does not have the aim to closely integrate connected applications together. The general vision is that simulators are created for one or more specific domain knowledge areas with their own granularity, boundaries and purposes. To closely integrate these simulators would mean to integrate these domains as well, most likely causing irredeemable conflicts in the individual granularities, boundaries and purposes. In order to maintain individuality of the simulators, a common simulation space provides a framework for communication, based on a minimum commonality of the data accepted and produced by the individual simulators and an event-driven design philosophy.
The document provides a set of protocols and associated message formats to facilitate elementary interaction processes for simulators to function inside a common simulation space. To provide a better understanding of the proposed guidelines, this CWA also provides a repository of example interactions between simulators connected to a common simulation space. These examples are not described to limit the use of this document but are carefully chosen to reflect the most common types of interaction simulators would be expected to encounter when using a common simulation space. Each use case consists of a brief description of its intention, accompanied with a scenario description to provide an example for this use case. Based on this scenario, the desired information exchange flow and the required guidelines, messages, infrastructure and services to implement this flow are defined. Please note that the scenarios used inside each use case can be easily translated to other topics or configurations that serve the same purpose of the use case.
7.4 CEN/WS TER-CDM - Terminologies in Crisis and Disaster Management
The CWA 17335 is addressing all actors of the national and international crisis and disaster management domain in order to improve mutual understanding in all phases of the crisis management cycle. The CWA offers approaches supporting improved semantic interoperability between IT solutions of different actors such as first responders, authorities and crisis managers.
The CWA can be applied in different fields of applications. Technical experts are often requested to support crisis management staff during a crisis. As disaster and crisis management is typically not part of their daily business, they can use the thesaurus in order to improve communication with the crisis management staff. Another area is the exchange of messages with annotations typically between IT solutions of practitioners. Both sender and receiver receive semantic information including similarities of definitions of key terms while exchanging information. An additional potential application is the collection of relevant documents for emergency planning. A search string might be typed into a search engine and a hint on semantically related is given. Search results can be enriched by semantic annotations. The CWA can also be used to support the development of new context specific terminologies as well as digital thesauri.
The central Austrian crisis and disaster management terminology is specified in the national standard S2304 “Integrated Disaster Management – Terms and Definitions”, procedures for the national crisis and disaster management are provided by the National Crisis and Disaster Management (SKKM) that is coordinated by the Austrian Ministry of Interior. In 2018 the committee K246 “Societal Security” of Austrian Standards started a new standardisation initiative with the purpose to specify a methodology for analysing and comparing of crisis and disaster related terms, their definitions as well as context. The new methodology is based on the procedures of the CWA 17335, aligned with the framing of the SKKM and cantered around the vocabulary of the S2304.
This CEN Workshop Agreement analyses definitions of terms used in crisis and disaster management as well as the scopes of the related source based on a set of indicators developed by the members of the CWA. Both scopes and definitions from different sources are compiled and compared regarding several aspects such as their context and envisaged audience. Sources could be a terminology standard or web services.
The focus is set in responses to large scale critical events. Small scale incidents managed by daily routine processes of stakeholders are also covered but are not the main focus of this CWA. Selected terminologies predominantly from the domains crisis and disaster management are used for the analysis and are included in the document. The CEN Workshop Agreement includes terminologies and taxonomies, but no ontologies.
7.5 ISO - New Work Item Proposal on Societal Impact Assessment (SIA)
During the initiation process of a CWA, European TCs need to be considered if the technical committee's scope covers the topic of the proposed CWA. When DRIVER+ proposed the Societal impact assessment framework to CEN/TC 391, as the responsible TC, feedback was received that led to the initiation of a preliminary work item on the international level within ISO/TC 292 Security and resilience. A preliminary work item is a document proposed to a TC as a proposal for starting the development on a new standard. A preliminary work item is a document proposed to a TC as a proposal for starting the development on a new standard.
The objective of doing a SIA is to ensure that the implementation of CM solutions maximises its benefits and minimises its burdens, especially those burdens borne by people. Burdens and benefits may not be measurable or quantifiable and are often hard to consider exactly for this reason. Nonetheless, they are important, and by identifying societal impacts in advance, in particular, two advantages are evident: a) Better decisions can be made about which solutions should be employed and how they should be employed, and b) Mitigating actions can be implemented to minimise the harm and maximise the benefits from a specific planned solution or related activity.
In the larger societal context, by achieving these advantages, other benefits include positive impacts such as accountability and acceptability. Accountability means that CM participants are in various ways responsible for what they do and should be able to give a satisfactory reason for it. Acceptability of solutions, since crisis managers depend on the society accepting the CM solutions, especially if the solutions are participatory in the sense that they require that the public actively engages in them.
The document on the SIA that will be provided to ISO/TC 292 will suggest a common guidance on how to carry out a Societal Impact Assessment on potential CM solutions. Potential CM solutions may be offered in terms of new technological tools or IT services, or non-technological processes or methods. The overall goal is to improve capability in the context of, and for any aspect of Crisis Management. Selecting a Crisis Management solution in a societal responsible way requires a systematic assessment approach that will allow an evaluation of the way the solution may impact the society. The SIA framework was initiated and developed within the DRIVER+ project for that purpose. The framework contains a structured methodology for assessing societal impact of CM solutions in order to avoid negative societal side effects. The potential standard should raise awareness on the importance of societal impact assessment in CM.
The background for the initiation of the process with regards to the SIA Framework is to contribute to a more harmonised view on societal impact. Public procurements typically look primarily at economic sustainability. When expensive technologies are being procured, there are several considerations to make. The technology must be fit for purpose, sustainable, and importantly: accepted by practitioners and society. If the technology is not accepted, the investment will not be successful. To some extent, CM solution procurement primarily considers the crisis managers and responder practitioners, and not the society around them. Therefore, a harmonised approach to SIA seems important. In addition, a more structured approach to SIA in CM and research projects can lead to a cultural change, where social impact becomes a natural part of daily activities. To contribute to such a mind-set change, so to focus not only on the economic impact and practitioners’ impact of new solutions but also on the societal impact, it was decided that the DRIVER+ SIA Framework should be further considered through the establishment of a PWI.
The following regulations are relevant for the proposed NWIP:
- Decision No 1313/2013/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism.
- Council Regulation (EU) 2016/369 on the provision of emergency support within the Union.
- Regulation No 375/2014 of the European Parliament and the Council on establishing the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps (‘EU Aid Volunteers initiative’).
- Regulation (EC) No 1257/96 concerning humanitarian aid.
- The aim of the Framework is to bring a practical and exploitable tool for conducting SIAs to solution providers, practitioner organizations/end-users and researchers working in CM, but also to raise awareness on the importance of societal impact assessment in CM.
8. Centre of Expertise (CoE) toolkit
To support interested organisations in becoming a functioning Centre of Expertise (CoE), DRIVER+ offers guidance to proceed through a three-stage process: Orienting & Positioning, Shaping & Implementing, and Operating & Evaluating. The three stages help an organisation to:
- Decide whether it wants to take up DRIVER+ outcomes and which one(s) (Orienting & Positioning).
- Undertake preparatory steps for becoming a Centre of Expertise, up to the point of formal establishment as a CoE (Shaping & Implementing).
- Perform activities as a CoE, evaluate this performance versus the expectations, and consider whether/ which adjustments are necessary (Performing & Evaluating).
These stages are indicative and non-binding and each organisation will undergo its own journey toward becoming a Centre of Expertise. The pathway to become a CoE depends on the local context and specific features of the organisation, the national and institutional context, ambition and resources at their disposal, as well as the network of organisations they would work in partnership with and support.
DRIVER+ developed a toolkit that supports organisations in becoming a CoE (https://www.driver-project.eu/centres-of-expertise-coe/). The toolkit provides organisations an entry point and assists them in exploring their opportunities, shaping the CoE, and performing as a CoE. Each Centre of Expertise will be unique and different, so the information in the toolkit is formulated in general terms. Examples illustrate how this general information can be used by potential CoEs in specific situations. Therefore, no ‘one size fits all’ operational plan has been developed: this depends on the specific context and ambition of the CoEs and can best be developed individually.
For each stage, the CoE toolkit covers all building blocks of the Business Model Canvas. Each building block contains questions and suggestions helping the organisations through each stage. The toolkit provides criteria and activities for guidance and support. In the first stage, Orienting & Positioning, the main activity for organisations is to explore the added value of the DRIVER+ products to decide whether these are of interest.
The second stage, Shaping & Implementing, starts when the organisation has decided regarding which DRIVER+ outcome(s) will be adopted. At the end of the Orienting & Positioning stage the organisation has a general outline of the value proposition, key activities, key partners, key resources, etc. During the Shaping & Implementing stage, these building blocks will be elaborated in more detail and consequently refined and consolidated.
The last stage, Performing & Evaluating, concerns checking whether everything is going according to plan, and evaluating and adjusting if necessary. In this phase, the organisation can also consider expanding its portfolio of DRIVER+ outcomes, adopt a new DRIVER+ outcome or revisit its activities.
To further support prospective CoEs in their decision making process, an interactive version of the CoE toolkit has been developed. This excel-based tool is developed and implemented in such a way it can be used as a self-assessment tool. The answers to the questions per building block can be rated by the organisation itself on a five point scale. Based on these ratings and the relative weights per rating, the CoE toolkit gives an assessment for Stages I and II: the prospective CoE is well on track (green colour), needs some further information (orange colour), or is not ready (red colour). For Stage III guiding questions are provided.
Potential Impact:
1. Potential impact
The overarching objective of the DRIVER+ project is to improve the way capability development and innovation management are tackled, by testing and validating (in realistic environments) solutions that are addressing the operational needs of practitioners dealing with Crisis Management. However, Crisis Management is a complex and multi-layered field, involving many different organisations and disciplines throughout its cycle (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery). With newly arising, cross-border security threats in Crisis Management (natural disasters, terrorist threats, pandemics, migration), Europe is in need of a convergence of resources, but also of solutions and knowledge, to better manage those ever-changing risks and threats. Market fragmentation, lack of common certification, as well as common standards in the field, adds to the challenges practitioners are facing today. To overcome these limitations, and therefore to reach a shared understanding in Crisis Management across Europe, there is a clear necessity for the creation of a united ecosystem in Crisis Management, the establishment of common practices, the access to similar information and the set-up of mechanisms for exchanges on lessons learned. The engagement of policy makers, researchers, practitioners, industry representatives, and citizens in Crisis Management innovation is a key to reduce fragmentation, create a shared understanding, and find better solutions to cope with today’s and tomorrow’s threats and crises.
Currently several frameworks, initiatives and visions for Crisis Management exist in Europe, but no overarching strategy has been defined yet at a macro level on how to effectively and efficiently involve the diverse groups of stakeholders. The current and most notable driving forces of this overarching strategical process are (i) the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism (EUCPM) and the envisioned Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network; (ii) DG HOME´s ‘Community of Users on Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies’ initiative (iii), the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC); (iv) the International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation (IFAFRI) and (v) the European Forum for Disaster Risk Reduction (EFDRR). While these mechanisms aim to define and implement this overarching strategy, a clear need to further develop, support, complement and strengthen the existing frameworks and initiatives has been identified in order to foster innovation and a shared understanding in Crisis Management across Europe.
The ambition of DRIVER+ with regards to an improved stakeholder engagement and the emergence of a shared understanding is first and foremost a long-term one: to build and engage with an active and structured Community of Practice in the field of Crisis Management that will be sustainable after the end of the project duration. The Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) is established to facilitate this interaction. It has the potential to become an overarching body connecting Crisis Management stakeholders to exchange best practices, lessons learned and innovative ideas, in order to facilitate the implementation of policies and the uptake of research and innovation by practitioners and policymakers.
This is complemented by significant contributions towards enhancing the shared understanding that were achieved by (1) creating a diverse set of sustainable results, ranging from the Test-bed to networking opportunities and a dynamic repository of innovative solutions, to the Trials and by (2) facilitating complex knowledge generation processes that resulted in comprehensive policy recommendations for the European CM domain, following a series of Policy-Research Dialogue Roundtable (PRDR) workshops and Innovation for Crisis Management (I4CM) events. There is a specific value in this approach which is fostering a shared understanding of Crisis Management at various levels and from complementary perspectives. The sustainability concerns that have guided the design and development of the DRIVER+ outputs give reason to expect that this shared understanding, as promoted by the project, will carry on beyond DRIVER+. It is obvious that a single research project could not overcome the fragmentation and political sensitiveness of the CM domain, but having ensured the sustainability of all main outputs will surely help in working towards this. This will be further stimulated by having the various EC actors (mainly DG HOME, DG ECHO, REA, JRC) using these outputs themselves and strongly endorsing the uptake by other stakeholders (policy makers, practitioners, research and capacity building projects). The current COVID-19 situation will surely trigger a critical reflection on the current setup of crisis management within Europe; this window of opportunity might lead to a more integrated CM system in Europe. Crises affecting several MS simultaneously need an integrated and harmonized approach across Europe, and for this, a common understanding of CM in Europe is preconditional.
In order to achieve the potential impacts, DRIVER+ has formulated several recommendations to the EC. This are described below.
A) Implement a forward-looking capability planning mechanism in practitioner organisations
Many practitioner organisations do what they have to do: prepare for and respond to urgent and actual crisis situations. Planning is usually covering a period up to five years ahead. The initiation of research and innovation activities is often triggered by specific events. This limited timeframe and reactive approach leads to a situation in which fast-changing security situations are not adequately dealt with. The risk is that research and innovation programmes are focusing on solving yesterday’s crises. A pre-condition to a capability deployment programme would be the establishment of a forward-looking capability planning process in Disaster Risk Management and Security. Such a process would identify medium to long-term needs and gaps and would contribute to the definition of EU Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) agendas matching the end-user requirements.
To achieve this goal, besides the practitioners, experts from various technological and social sciences, both from the Crisis Management and other domains, need to closely collaborate with each other. These experts conduct technology watches, inventory socio-cultural, climate and demographic developments, and determine potential impacts on the practitioners. Based on these potential future scenarios, capabilities can be described and associated topics for future research programs identified.
This structured capability development approach needs to be implemented at Member States level feeding into the research programming at EC level to address validated and broadly accepted practitioners’ needs. And ideally, these expert groups collaborate across the EU and Associated Countries, in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts, to learn from each other and to allow an exploitation of synergies between the efforts already undertaken at MS level and the ones expected to be complementary on the EU level. The established H2020 Practitioner Networks as well as the DRIVER+ CoE network can play an important facilitating role in this respect. Obviously, these networks must be sustained after the respective projects for which support of national governments may be needed.
It must be understood, however, that the future is volatile, thus research and innovation projects cannot and should not in all cases directly be linked to clearly defined capabilities. Low ‘Technology Readiness Level’ (TRL) research actions in the work programmes should be included and be as open as possible to allow the inclusion of potential disruptive technologies. A close link between the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) program and the domain of DRM needs to be established. Because there is much uncertainty about the future usability of these technologies, the initial duration of such projects should be limited with options for continuation if the results are promising and the future need is still acknowledged. This requires a more flexible and agile research and innovation programming.
B) Adopt a common trial and validation framework
Following the steps in the capability development cycle, from an analysis of gaps and needs, via an assessment of what is available, to research and innovation, and eventually to acquisition, strongly supports the successful implementation of innovative technologies into the field of operations at MS level. Validation of whether these needs have been properly addressed should be the responsibility of the MS. In order to support this validation already during the research and innovation projects, it is beneficial to introduce a pan-European trial and validation framework (like the DRIVER+ Test-bed) into the European research programme. A standardised methodology for trialling and validation should be adopted, or at least it should be a requirement to clearly explain the trial and validation methods to be used. This is not always the case, leading to the potential risk of having an imprecise or inaccurate understanding of the outcomes of a trial, of the reliability and validity of its results and its potential benefits for practitioner organisations.
C) Align MS and EU capability development strategies
In many Member States, national institutions are often fragmented and spread across different line ministries leading to poor communication and lack of cooperation: national harmonisation is required. In addition, policy-makers should take ownership of the results. If they call for specific topics/research, they should feel responsible for implementing the results, or at least facilitating their implementation.
The establishment of the pan-European network of CoEs contributes to a partnership-based DRM innovation ecosystem supporting the alignment of capability development strategies of practitioner organisations, Member States’ authorities, European institutions, the research community and the private sector (industry, incubators). This innovation eco-system should be practitioner-driven to ensure practical outputs, systematic tests and trials, and a service-oriented approach. Achieving this would require the adoption of a co-creation process and the constant involvement of practitioners. This multiple-stakeholder engagement is crucial, as the perspectives of practitioners, researchers, policy-makers, industry and citizens on what a “good” result is can be very different.
The rationale for a partnership-based approach lies in the need to implement an efficient capability process that would allow the common missions, needs and operational requirements to be defined and, at the same time, identify possible solutions matching these requirements in a mid to long-term time frame. In the process, the demand side (responsible for the assessment of needs), the research community (better placed to identify technology and capability gaps) and the private sector (well positioned to develop solutions and provide services) complement each other. Such a “requirement pull” approach would make security research investments at MS and EU level more efficient by linking RD&I activities to capability deployment, completing the mission-oriented approach proposed in the Horizon Europe Regulation.
D) Allow for a sufficient size and duration of Security RD&I projects
Simply reducing the duration of projects does not lead to shorter times to market. On the contrary: rushing the development and testing of new solutions may lead to suboptimal results, no imple-mentation, and even negative effects on operational performance. In the end, such duration reduction strategy results in a disinvestment and loss of time. Likewise, minimizing the size of projects does not automatically increase the efficiency, and large projects do not automatically lead to inefficiency. Projects at the scale of DRIVER+ can definitely provide an added value. A larger scale project creates mass, can deliver rather mature, consistent and integrated products and can mobilise and bring together a broad community of different stakeholders.
E) Lift the coordination of useful project interactions to DG level
It is important to note that RD&I projects are no stand-alone projects, but rather a shackle in a chain. In order to have an as strong chain as possible, leading to a successful implementation of new solutions, key actors of the next step in the innovation process should already be actively engaged. Research is only part of the journey, only piece of the bigger security puzzle. One potential way of articulating the connections among the pieces, is to lift the coordination of useful project interactions to DG level; this would allow further policymaking to draw from the learnings in the Security RD&I projects performed. This could be organised via a dedicated CSA organising a platform to facilitate synergies and to avoid duplication in efforts managed by the DG directly. As reflected in the Security Union, the high interdisciplinarity of research topics in Secure Societies also asks for recognition of several other activities, e.g. under DG ECHO, DG SANCO, DG DEFIS, EDA, and ESA, which is difficult to achieve from the view of a single project. This higher level coordination will avoid fragmentation of the RD&I landscape and support the integration of the various results.
F) Adopt research results as EC
An active endorsement of project results by the EC is crucial for the credibility and acceptance of these results by stakeholders. However, the EC itself is also an important stakeholder and potential user of project outcomes, and should not just coordinating/monitoring and financing the projects. Specifically related to DRIVER+, the TGM and the TTI could be used as a common trial and validation framework (DG HOME, DG ECHO, REA, JRC), as well as instruments to further enhance the design and evaluation of exercises (DG ECHO); the PoS and the L3 could contribute to building a proper understanding of the current state-of-the-art solutions and lessons learned (REA, DG HOME); CMINE can support the engagement with the relevant communities and stakeholders within the CoU and the Practitioner Networks (DG HOME), the EUCP Knowledge Network (DG ECHO) and the dissemination of project results (REA, DG RTD); the CoE network can boost the collaboration and exchange of information, results and experiences between all stakeholders within the innovation ecosystem and stimulates the access to research results (DG HOME, JRC, DG ECHO).
Also for future projects the EC should seriously consider adopting and using results of projects that are financed with EC funds. Participation as a potential user during the project would be the first and minimum step: not only at the very end of a project, but preferably at the beginning so as to include their user input and feedback, and to align with current (and emerging) EC policy frameworks.
G) Advance the dialogue between all stakeholders
Preconditional to establishing structured partnerships and aligning capability development strategies is the facilitation of a well-structured dialogue between all stakeholders. For this purpose, DG HOME has established the Community of Users for Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies. It has the ambition to develop synergies among research and capacity-building projects and to contribute to Strategic Civil Security Research Agendas in support of the Horizon Europe programming. As part of the rescEU policy framework, the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network is being established. Currently under development, the Knowledge Network will support experts, practitioners, policy-makers, researchers, trainers and volunteers at every stage of the disaster management cycle through networking, partnerships, collaborative opportunities, and access to expertise and good practices.
All EC-funded projects are currently required to build and maintain their own stakeholder communities and to create their own community platform. In general, the individual projects seem to compete amongst each other in this respect and are hesitant towards sharing their networks with other projects and initiatives. After the projects end, there is a high risk that these networks become inactive, potentially leading to less enthusiasm with the stakeholders to join yet another community for future projects. It is recommended that the EC (REA, DG HOME) not only endorses but actually requires the usage of one common technology-supported community platform by all projects (at least within Secure Societies). This not only enhances the exchange of information and creates synergies, but also saves time and tax payer’s money. DRIVER+ has developed CMINE which is a suitable candidate community platform.
H) Align the EC financial instruments
A more efficient approach to the research programming and the consecutive procurement of solutions should be based on a medium to long-term approach following a systematic process of the definition of needs, identification of capability gaps and definition of common operational requirements that would allow the successful implementation of the solutions, enhancing interoperability and minimising, at the same time, the risk of security breaches. Going from idea to market asks for a coherent development trajectory, reflecting all stages of technology readiness and maturity to be achieved to come up with a final innovative solution. This cannot be covered by one single RD&I project: this trajectory comprises multiple, often sequential projects, partly involving different partners. It calls for a better alignment of H2020/Horizon Europe programs with other financial instruments and funding mechanisms (e.g. capacity building projects, DG ECHO funded exercises, INTERREG, national innovation programs) to develop projects from early stage concept up to advanced prototype solutions leading to a successful implementation and market uptake.
DRIVER+ was conducted within the context of FP7. It was a so-called demonstration project, and within H2020 and HEU this kind of projects does not exist anymore as such. Furthermore, DRIVER+ was a project within the area of Disaster Resilient Societies. Nevertheless, it is expected that the results, lessons learned and the recommendations also apply to H2020 and HEU projects as well as projects outside of the CM and DRM domain.
2 Main dissemination activities
Dissemination and communications activities have been an integral aspect of DRIVER+ since the beginning of the project. In the starting phases, the main objective was to motivate different stakeholder groups to become involved with the project and take part in the different preparatory workshops, events and Trials. For this, the project vision and potential benefits to the Crisis Management community had to be effectively communicated. As the project began to give tangible results, the communication activities became more outputs-oriented. This was essential in order to generate interest from practitioner organisations in adopting DRIVER+ outputs. As DRIVER+ enters its final stage, the question of sustainability becomes of utmost importance: stakeholders must be reassured with regards to this aspect if they are to invest time and effort in adopting project outputs and must know where to find support once the project has ended. At each stage of the project, dissemination and communication activities have supported these evolving objectives by creating adequate promotional material, adapted to different formats and uses and implementing strategies that allowed the project to engage with the desired group of stakeholders using the right messaging.
2.1 Start-up phase: Informing about the project and results
The aim of the start-up phase is to inform identified stakeholders about the project – its vision, objectives, activities and results. In the first months of implementation (M41-M52), a new visual identity was created for DRIVER+; the stakeholder and press databases were reassembled; the public website was set up and a basic package of assets (leaflet, brochure, roll-up banner, animated infographic video, and PowerPoint presentation) were created to provide the consortium with basic communication material. Furthermore, a set of dissemination and communication guidelines were established to ensure consistency.
Following the 5th Technical Review meeting in September 2018 (M53), it was stressed that the focus should be shifted to project results. This led to the commissioning of individual logos to identify each output as well as to the creation of a new section on the project website dedicated to showcasing results (outputs, deliverables and other reports). Since August 2019 (M64), this results-oriented dissemination and communication approach has been pursued and deepened, most notably through the production of promotional assets for the different DRIVER+ outputs including leaflets in all cases and videos when appropriate. A redefinition of the online and mass-media strategy was decided upon to match the specific objectives of the final phase of the project, namely:
- Promoting the Final Conference with the aim of enrolling 300 profiled delegates.
- Communicating on the benefits that conducting innovation Trials based on the DRIVER+ Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM) and the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure (TTI) can bring to Crisis Management organisations and solutions providers.
- Calling on the Crisis Management community to make use of the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE) for discussion, information sharing and networking.
- Encouraging European organisations focused on Crisis Management training and capacity development to explore the possibility of becoming a DRIVER+ Centre of Expertise.
- Encouraging solution providers, practitioner organisations and affiliated European projects to use the Portfolio of Solutions (PoS), particularly to register low TRL solutions.
DRIVER+ visual identity
The core of the revised DRIVER+ visual identity is the project logo, which uses a shape evoking a tornado. The colours selected were blue (resilience, reliability) and orange (optimism, novelty). Specific logos were also created for the different DRIVER+ products and events.
Public website
The public website, launched in December 2017, is the hub that reassembles all public information, documentation and promotional assets. Its content and structure has evolved along with the project.
Newsletter
The DRIVER+ newsletter has been used as a tool to bring attention to the project’s achievements and as an opportunity for continuous engagement with stakeholders who have been involved with DRIVER+ in different qualities and stages of the project. A total of ten newsletters have been sent over the duration of the project.
Social media
DRIVER+ is present on social media through the project’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Through the Twitter account, the project communications reach other research projects, practitioner and academic organisations, solutions providers and policymaking bodies. Being present on LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a way for the project to interact with stakeholders on an individual level by connecting with their personal accounts. Based on specific objectives per key target group, a series of key messages was subsequently outlined for each category to be disseminated across the social media platforms. On the basis of these objectives and key messages, a social media calendar was created for each month. Planning for content in advance provides an overview of the project’s social media communications over several weeks, thereby ensuring coherence and thoroughness. A conscientious effort was made to use social media to fully exploit and distribute the wide array of communications supports produced throughout the project: professional photography, interviews, trailers, animations, leaflets, reports.
In addition to Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, the project had also set up a YouTube channel, used as a video library to host and easily share the more than 20 videos produced by the project and organise them according to thematic playlists (e.g. outputs, Trials, events). These videos were also made available via the project website.
Mass media relations
From the start of the project, a subject-specific media contacts database was created, and press releases have been consistently circulated to promote events and announce the achievement of milestones. Press releases were circulated amongst the project’s media database and shared with the consortium for dissemination within the partners’ networks. They are also published on CORDIS Wire when they pertain to major project milestones. The list of press releases issued since the beginning of the project as well as the complete list of press clippings and press releases can be found on the Media section of the public website.
2.2 Demonstration phase: getting feedback from stakeholders
The Demonstration phase encompasses activities aimed at consulting with and involving external stakeholders. Consultation with external DRIVER+ stakeholders was structured around different event series, most notably I4CM (‘Innovation for Crisis Management’) and PRDR (‘Policy-Research Dialogue Roundtables’). The I4CM events bring together local practitioners and solutions providers to meet, exchange best practices and give visibility to their initiatives. They focus on specific Crisis Management topics (i.e. inter-agency/cross-border cooperation for I4CM Warsaw and volunteer management for I4CM Copenhagen). Various dissemination and communication initiatives (distribution of press releases, social media strategy) were put in place to promote these events and their outcomes.
The PRDRs are closed events. To promote attendance to qualified delegates, relevant stakeholder categories were identified according to the topic of each edition. Three PRDR events were organised together with DG HOME:
A) Supporting a pan-European approach to capability development in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction and Crisis Management
B) Discussing the contributions to the programming of disaster risk management component of Horizon Europe
C) Collaboration in research-related standardisation activities in crisis management
A DRIVER+ User Workshop was organised, which focused on presenting project outputs to potential users.
A list of third-party events was created at the project start and circulated to all partners. This list has been regularly updated and shared with partners on a monthly basis, which can in turn update the document themselves. Participation in these events resulted from partners’ initiatives or from a suggestion of the communication team. Particular attention was devoted to diversifying the type of events in order to best cover the various DRIVER+ components. Overall, participation at third-party events took careful consideration of the expected aim, the target audience and the benefits to be achieved in order to maximise impact.
In support of the Trials and Final Demonstration, several dissemination and communication activities were conducted. A communications plan was devised for each DRIVER+ Trial, including:
- Production of a Trial Catalogue of Solutions that contains general information about the project as well as key facts on the Trial scenario and the solutions being tested.
- The design and implementation of a social media strategy covering event and the days preceding and succeeding the Trial.
- The drafting and circulation amongst specialised media of a press release before and after the event.
- The documentation of the event for the general public through a video report.
- Generation of professional stills imagery, freely available via the project website.
As part of the Final Demo, a VIP event was organised to engage with key Polish stakeholders, as well as announcing the officialization of the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences as the first DRIVER+ Centre of Expertise.
2.3 Sustainability phase: evaluating, sustaining and disseminating results
An “Impact and Sustainability Communications Strategy” was outlined resulting in the following activities and outputs.
Promotional material for DRIVER+ outputs
A leaflet for each of the main DRIVER+ products was created following the same structure: a) What is it? b) Who is it for? c) What is the added value? Each leaflet features an explanatory illustration. It is digitally available in all EU languages.
A Flipbook was created to reassemble all the leaflets in an easily shareable digital format. It also includes a general introduction and illustration explaining how all the outputs fit together. Translations of the Flipbook are available in priority languages French, Dutch, Polish, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and Estonian as defined according to the working language of organisations highly involved with the project, or potential Centres of Expertise.
Several videos have been produced. a five-minute introduction to the DRIVER+ Test-bed was created using footage from the different Trials and interviews with key project staff. An introductory animation of the Test-bed Technical Infrastructure had previously been created. Additionally, four Testimonial videos provide insight into different aspects of the project from a personal perspective. A video providing a general overview of the project was produced and shown at the Final Conference. This video, together with the leaflets, provides several pieces of dissemination collateral that may be used by any partners or Centres of Expertise, indeed even after the conclusion of the project to support discussions about any of the DRIVER+ outputs.
Final Conference
The DRIVER+ Final Conference, organised on 19-20 February 2020 at the BluePoint Brussels conference centre, had two main objectives. The first one was to showcase and demonstrate the DRIVER+ sustainable outputs and to promote their use and adoption. The second was to put these outputs into a larger context of Crisis Management innovation and community-building. On the afternoon of February 18th, the day before the start of the Final Conference, a VIP session was organised for national and EU policy makers, senior practitioners and innovation managers. The attendees benefitted from a private tour of the DRIVER+ exhibition as well as dedicated keynotes and a panel discussion on the policy implications of the DRIVER+ outputs among representatives from DG ECHO, DG HOME, JRC and Campus Vesta. The conference aimed both at supporting the sustainability of DRIVER+ results and giving them sense by putting them in a larger framework. This double objective was reflected by the choice of speakers that consisted of a combination of DRIVER+ internal speakers and externals, who would be addressing the bigger picture of Crisis Management and disaster risk reduction and cross-cutting issues such as climate change and social inclusion. In this manner, the programme ensured strong visibility of the DRIVER+ project at the event, its network and its results, while at the same time positioning these within a larger context.
3. Exploitation of results
All DRIVER+ products have been developed based on validated practitioner needs, gaps and research questions, in a co-creation process with many different practitioners, stimulating the uptake of these products, and with a variety of stakeholders, both within and outside the consortium, bringing together a wide range of visions, knowledge, skills and networks, making the project outputs useful for a large community. As such, DRIVER+ was able to produce valuable results that benefit crisis management stakeholders and other EU funded safety and security research innovation projects.
All products developed in the project have been published under open source licences. This means that anybody is free to use, share, adapt and further distribute the tools. This includes permission on commercial exploitation, except for the TGM Handbook. The following licencing schemes apply:
- Trial Guidance Methodology Handbook: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- Societal Impact Assessment Analysis Framework: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- Societal Impact Assessment Training: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- Crisis Management Terminology: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (Note: When the terminology is published as part the PoS, the PoS Data licence will be applicable)
- Training Module: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
- Portfolio of Solutions Software: MIT License (Note that the existing Drupal blocks are licensed under GPL)
- Portfolio of Solutions Data: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- Trial Guidance Tool: MIT License
- Trial Guidance Tool Data: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- Lessons Learned Library: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- CMINE Online Platform: service contract established between Hivebrite (owner) and RAN (community manager)
- Centre of Expertise Toolkit: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
- All four CEN Workshop Agreements are published under the copyright of CEN (see www.cen.eu)
To ease the use and adoption process, all main outcomes have been translated and are available in nine EU languages. To facilitate the further uptake of the results a DRIVER+ Adopters Package has been produced and widely distributed. This concise and attractive-looking package provides per main outcome a short description of: the outcome, the intended users and expected added value, and practical information on how to access the tools and find support for sustained use of the outcomes.
The vision of DRIVER+ has been to create a pan-European arena of virtually connected facilities and crisis labs where users, solution providers, researchers, policy makers and citizens can jointly progress on new approaches or solutions to emerging issues. This network is intended to not only facilitate innovation in CM, but also to generate a European CM culture and more shared understanding of CM across Europe. The nodes in this pan-European network are labelled as Centres of Expertise. In order to facilitate the uptake and implementation of the DRIVER+ products, the project has followed an intense, practitioner-driven approach, and several user manuals and animations have been developed, as well as a Training Module. Nevertheless, these products are not fully self-explanatory and very likely additional support is needed to assist practitioner organisations in implementing, applying and tailor-making these products. This expert-support can best be provided by an organisation having a central (national) role in the capability development of practitioner organisations: the Centre of Expertise (CoE).
To ensure the sustainability and further development of the results, the DRIVER+ consortium has established a pan-European Centres of Expertise (CoE) network, consisting of reputed European institutions. The DRIVER+ Centres of Expertise support practitioner organisations in the field of crisis management, disaster risk reduction and security in their capability development and innovation management. They do this by applying one or more of the main DRIVER+ products.
The CoE members are practitioner-driven organisations. In principle it is not feasible for universities, Research & Technology Organisations, consultancy firms and solution providers to become a CoE. Exceptions may be possible (e.g. due to specific expertise). A Centre of Expertise will act, whenever relevant and possible, as an intermediary between practitioner organisations and (applied) research organisations, solution providers, public administration and policy-makers in the crisis management and security domain. In order to work together within this innovation ecosystem, an exchange of information, results and experiences between all stakeholders, projects and knowledge networks should be facilitated. With this purpose in mind, the DRIVER+ pan-European network of Centres of Expertise has been established. As the implementations and experiences will vary from organisation to organisation as well as between Member States, this CoE network will gather and share lessons learned, and, if necessary, adapt the respective DRIVER+ outcomes to organisational and/or national contexts. Sharing these experiences and lessons learned within the pan-European network of CoEs, is crucial. Only then a shared understanding in crisis management, and a shared approach in practitioners’ capability development can be achieved and further improved.
For the CoE network, a governance structure with a rotating chair has been agreed upon with the founding partners during the CoE governance meeting held in June 2020. During the first year after DRIVER+ the network will be chaired by SRC PAS and co-chaired by RAN. The founding members of the DRIVER+ CoE network are:
- Crisis Information Centre - Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences – CIK.
- Main School of Fire Service – SGSP (Poland).
- Austrian Red Cross.
- Lithuanian Cybercrime Center of Excellence for Training, Research, Development and Education – L3CE.
- Entente pour la Forêt Méditerranéenne – Valabre (France).
- Estonian Academy of Security Sciences – EASS.
- Resilience Advisors Network – RAN (Ireland).
- German Federal Agency for Technical Relief – THW (Germany).
- Campus Vesta (Belgium).
- Peace Research Institute Oslo – PRIO (Norway).
- Disaster Competence Network Austria – DCNA.
Also MSB (Sweden) and IFV (Netherlands) are connected to the CoE network. For an up-to-date overview of CoEs including contact info, DRIVER+ outcome they support, and offered services, see: https://www.driver-project.eu/centres-of-expertise/.
Furthermore, both DG ECHO and DG HOME have expressed their strong interest in the project’s results. Discussions with DG ECHO on how the DRIVER+ outcomes may contribute to the EU Civil Protection Knowledge Network have taken place since the Final Demo in November 2019, and will continue after the project. In addition, there are ongoing discussions with DG HOME on how especially the CMINE can support the Community of Users for Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies, and these will continue beyond the project as well. To further stimulate the uptake of the PoS, and to stimulate the acceptance of the Pos by DG HOME and DG ECHO, we have established links with the Projects Explorer and Gaps Explorer developed by the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC), and included the gaps as identified by the International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation (IFAFRI). In addition, the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the EC has expressed their interest in becoming a CoE, with a particular interest in the Test-bed to further strengthen their European Crisis Management Laboratory (ECML).
The beneficiaries of DRIVER+ will be applying the various products in new national and EU-funded projects. Furthermore, the results are used to improve their own products and services to be offered to their customers, and to attract new customers and/or partners.
List of Websites:
https://www.driver-project.eu/