EPISECC, SecInCoRe e SECTOR together again. Three of the four FP7-projects which have the common goal of improving the information sharing in disaster management across Europe, will meet tomorrow, 1 March, for the Kick-off Meeting of the CEN Workshop Agreement “Terminologies in crisis and disaster management” (TER-CDM). The meeting, hosted by the CEN (European Committee for Standardization), will give the start to the Workshop. The fourth project, REDIRNET, will provide additional support.
One of the main obstacles to an efficient information sharing in disaster management is represented by the lack of a common terminology. Even if there is actual physical interoperability, it’s fundamental to understad what the message contains. Several research projects on the topic of crisis and disaster management have been working on terminologies in crisis and disaster management and have developed documents or other repositories including related relevant national and international standards and other terminologies. The multitude of terms and definitions of these documents is overlapping, often confusing and in some cases partially contradicting. Such a situation enhances the possibility of misunderstanding between different organizations, in particular in case of cross-border cooperation.
The EPISECC, SECTOR and SecInCoRe projects put together their efforts and knowledge to define terminologies to be used by crisis management and disaster management professionals in view of supporting the mutual understanding of civil protection authorities, local emergency management authorities (LEMA), fire brigades, police authorities, first responders using different standards (and various semantic structures for e.g. dictionaries, thesauri, taxonomies, ontologies) on daily work. An efficient information sharing between the disaster management actors would considerably minimise the risks of misunderstandings, thus improving the cooperation between them. Such cooperation, when dealing with disasters and crises, is crucial for a successful management of the emergency.
The Workshop will deliver a CWA (CEN Workshop Agreement – a reference document from the CEN) on terminologies and taxonomies. The final deliverables of the Workshop should be finalised and published by September 2017.
The kick-off meeting will be held at CEN-CENELEC Management Centre in Brussels.
Recap
What: CEN Workshop ‘Terminologies in crisis and disaster management’ (TER-CDM)
When: 01/03/2017
Where: CEN-CENELEC Management Centre, Brussels, Belgium
More info: http://www.episecc.eu/ (EPISECC), http://www.redirnet.eu/ (REDIRNET), www.secincore.eu/ (SecInCoRe) www.fp7-sector.eu (SECTOR), https://www.cen.eu (CEN), https://www.cen.eu/News/Workshops/Pages/WS-2017-002.aspx (Kick-off meeting page, where you can find the Agenda and the Workshop Project Plan)