Innovating Preparedness by Leveraging SYNERGIES and Enhancing Results of DRM Projects

The SYNERGY project intends to promote preparedness with the coherent and synergic involvement of the different actors of disaster management. These actors include first and second responders, citizens, communities, education systems, authorities and public administrations, business companies and practitioners. The project will concentrate on five needs identified for disaster preparedness: i) involvement of all relevant actors in building preparedness; ii) strengthening preparedness education and training; iii) communicating with citizens; iv) management of spontaneous volunteers; v) ensuring sustainability of solutions for preparedness. To address these needs SYNERGIES is leveraging the knowledge, experience, and results of five H2020 projects (ENGAGE, RESILOC, LINKS, IMPACT, BUILDERS), and one nationally funded project (Ready2Help). The results of these projects will be integrated with practitioners' best practices and experiences, revised, and improved, increasing their level of maturity. Targeted research, including social science expertise, will be dedicated to covering remaining gaps and supporting the integration work. Three Real Preparedness Cases will offer the opportunity to orient the project work, evaluate the progress and demonstrate the final results. These Preparedness Cases are real situations in which stakeholders intend to improve preparedness with a better involvement and empowerment of citizens. The SYNERGIES activities will last 36 months with a Consortium composed of 16 partners, representative of all the types of stakeholders in DRM, including research organizations, business companies, first and second responders, civil society organizations, and authorities.