Reaching Out will address a wide scope, different regions in the world, areas of interest, related demonstrations and innovative tools. The 5 demonstrations will take place in Africa, Middle East and Asia with the active support and participation of national authorities who have mobilize their best resources.
Five large scale demonstrations are addressing different themes, environments and continents:
a) Health disaster: Epidemics in Africa - Guinea (Ebola) with strong social and cultural issues;
b) Natural disaster: Earthquake in a politically complex region and a desert environment - the
Dead Sea (led jointly by Jordan, Israel and Palestine);
c) Global change disasters in Asia:
- Large evacuation and humanitarian support: Bangladesh (long lasting floods, huge storms and associated epidemics),
- EU citizen support and repatriation: Shanghai (floods & storm surge),
- Radiological and industrial disasters impacting EU citizens and assets: Island of Taiwan (flash floods, landslides, storm surge and chemical and radiological disasters) supported jointly by EU and China.
In order to prepare solutions for an improved coordination, the demonstrations will define with the EU national and local authorities comprehensive and representative scenarios that will trigger as many aspects of the different crisis situations as possible, involving tactical, operational and strategic level with participation of EU and national stakeholders to be invited during the project by the European Commission.
To achieve the external demonstration objectives Reaching Out will involve Associated Partners from the demonstration countries. Local End Users will also be associated to the demonstrations. This will be the guarantee of the success of the demonstrations and of the future implementation. The associated partners will be managed regionally by the demonstration leaders in order to facilitate the dialogue. The associated partners and selected end users will be invited to join workshops with EU end users to create an international community and benefit from a mutual experience. China and Taiwan associated Partners are self-funded.
Demonstrations will build on the Reaching Out Collaborative Portal and platforms (End User Platform, ROSE Platform), developing new tools and connecting or integrating existing tools and as well as results of completed and on-going EC programs (7th Framework Programme various themes, H2020, other EC DGS), national, civil and defence projects, and combining them with legacy systems and tools.
Demonstration countries will also provide experience and feedbacks of interest for the EU users.
Ebola crisis
Previous epidemics have revealed gaps in humanitarian and health crisis management. The Reaching-Out Ebola demonstration will be a lessons learned-based model for improving health crisis management outside the EU. This type of crisis is highly specific and pinpoints the generic weaknesses impeding rapid and efficient crisis management. Several typical weaknesses can be found at different levels of the response management chain, both at the level of international and European organisations and at the level of the affected countries. In addition to EU support, the Ebola demonstration will address the question how the EU can better contribute to the improvement of factors that may substantially weaken the autonomous national capacity to face a large-scale crisis by hampering the rapid set-up of own logistics, medical and civil protection means, and an appropriate national and regional coordination. Specific human and anthropological issues will be addressed as well as prevention measures such as future vaccines. The Reaching-out Ebola demonstration will be held in Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, in December 2018 and will focus on a joint demonstration of deployable tools developed by the Reaching-Out partners to address identified health crisis management gaps, as well as on the training and education of local health staff as part of the reinforcement of local health care.
CONCEPT & APPROACHSevere Earthquake in the Jordan valley
A major earthquake along the Jordan Valley is eminent, and will cause a regional disaster, complicated by the geo-political situation. Such an incident will affect 8 – 10 million people, and massive international assistance will be needed. We see this demo as an opportunity for experts from the three entities (Israel, Palestinian Authority, Jordan) to explore innovative and novel solutions in different areas of crisis management; to work with the tool providers on adaptations needed in the tools to improve their performance in the regional setting; to learn more about international assistance coordination; and to exchange ideas.
Climate Extremes and Disasters in Asia
General objectives for the three Asia demonstrations.
The three demonstrations will be used for assessing the management chain and procedures with the aim to better serve the affected population and assets. The objective is to improve the following aspects:
- The situation awareness using the concept of Operational Resilience to support the decision process
- The global (international, regional and local) preparedness, including prevention measures
- The international, national, regional and local coordination for crisis management
- The decision and implementation of rapid on-site deployment
- The post-crisis management with (and without) the repatriation of citizens and resources and the formalized return of experience to be implemented in preparedness strategy.
- The need for clear dynamically updatable situational awareness heading to a real-time assessment of the situation (time scale adapted according to processes).
- The need to ensure interoperability of the portal with existing tools, standard operating procedures, equipment and other tools developed by Reaching Out.
- The need to develop an interface with the Social media that provide data from the field and represent a major communication channel towards affected population.