The EU-funded H2020 project PROACTIVE led by the UIC Security Division held its third consortium progress meeting and its first public workshop last week. The meeting was supposed to take place in Münster, Germany between 17 – 19 March 2020 at the kind invitation of the German Police Academy (DHPol), but in light of the COVID-19 global context, it was decided to adapt it to an online three-day meeting.
During the first two days, the 15 consortium partners discussed the technical developments of the project, exchanged on the ongoing tasks and prepared the next project activities. The first work package (CBRNe terrorism in Europe and beyond: Human Factors analysis of preparedness and response) has been successfully completed, resulting in three state-of-the-art reports which can be downloaded on the project website.
Further, on the 19 March 2020 the project held its (e)workshop with Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), practitioners and policymakers. About 40 participants from 17 different countries attended the online event. The represented countries were Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK, and Ukraine.
The attendees covered the all the main categories of the PROACTIVE Practitioners Stakeholder Advisory Board (PSAB): LEAs, firefighters, medical responders, military, rail security experts, Research/Academia, and policy officers including a representative of Europol. The experts discussed public perceptions and responses to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear and explosives (CBRNe) threats as well as the current policy for mitigation and management of such incidents. In addition, they debated the most relevant scenarios for the oncoming field exercises.
The (e)workshop also stimulated synergies between PROACTIVE and several other projects working on the CBRN security topic such as TRANSTUN, RESIST and the EU Healthy Gateways Joint Action.
The PROACTIVE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 832981.
PROACTIVE can be followed on Twitter (@PROACTIVE_EU) as well as on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/proactive-eu/) and the project website https://proactive-h2020.eu/.
