On March 16 and 17, EMRIC participated in the trilateral conference "Creating Links" organized by the NIPV. It was an international conference on civil protection and crisis management in the border region between the Netherlands and the German Länder of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.
During this two-day meeting, discussions focused, among other things, on mutual information exchange in the event of incidents, crisis communication and the role of border liaisons. The aim of the conference is to strengthen cooperation in disaster and crisis management in the border region and to develop working methods that contribute to this.
The conference was opened by the Dutch Minister of Justice and Security, the Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Minister of Interior and Sports of Lower Saxony. They then discussed the importance of cross-border cooperation in disaster and crisis management.
EMRIC in the workshops
Two workshops were then organized for the participants, who could choose from six different themes:
EMRIC guided the activities in two workshops. In the workshop "Civil Protection Challenges - Responses to the floods of July 2021", EMRIC presented the answer of the EMRIC partners to the floods, the Marhetak project and the experiences of the intervention forces during the floods in Kornelimünster.
In the workshop "Information management between intervention forces and crisis cells", EMRIC presented the German IGNRW and the procedure for the exchange of information between EMRIC partners. The NCCN (Belgian National Crisis Centre) presented Paragon, the European network-centric disaster and crisis information exchange system currently under development. The EMRIC region is a pilot region for this important project situated within the framework of Marhetak. An exercise on Paragon for EMRIC services and other relevant partners will also be organized within the framework of the Marhetak project.
The breaks and the evening were largely devoted to networking. On the second day, the results of the workshops were summarized in a panel discussion with the workshop speakers.