The world has always been a dangerous place for Homo sapiens and it seems every time society finds what might be a comprehensive solution, some new threat or risk arises that challenges or even defeats that security. In fact there is a well arguable case that the more interdependent and connected we become as a global society, the greater the risk of communal vulnerability.

It‘s then not surprising that, even within the highly developed and technically proficient European Union, inhabitants regularly suffer from the harmful and disruptive consequences of natural and man-made events. Although these vary in severity, the cumulative effects on natural, social and economic environments often adversely affect the health and well-being of European citizens. Europe's situation is often seen as simpler than other countries or continents, but against this background, the obvious need to improve risk preparedness cannot be ignored.

The EU Seventh Framework Program "FP7-SEC-2010.4.1-1 Aftermath crisis management-phase 1" call for research proposals to suggest integrated and scalable solutions in the aftermath of disasters is therefore timely. The broad objective was to develop a strategic roadmap that could progress to a full demonstration of capability.

Combined Forces
A consortium led by the European Organization for Security - a corporation based in Brussels representing 39 European civil security sector companies - successfully proposed a project entitled ‚Critical Response in Security and Safety Emergencies‘. This recently concluded its first phase study after a 16-month work cycle and some of the interesting findings and its suggestions are outlined below. There was a desire to engage both public and private actors and the success of the project really depended upon finding a professionally acceptable framework that was robust yet flexible enough to meet the multiple needs that emerge during diverse emergencies with durations from hours to months.

The Whole Team
In order to achieve a manageable outcome, a framework was constructed that enabled the responses from workshops in Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom to be collated and analyzed. This focused upon four operational scenarios - Earthquake and Landslides, Wildfire, Flood and Technical Failure - as well as eight key capabilities: Communications, Situational Awareness, Command and Decision Support, Logistics and Resource Planning, Fast Deployment in Harsh Environments, Search and Rescue, Medical Care and finally Restoration of Basic Services.

The outcome of this investigation ­produced conclusions that suggested:
1. One single body should coordinate EU action
2. A more systemic approach for crisis response was required
3. A common operating framework was needed to unify response
4. Fuller interoperability is needed
5. Increased interoperability between civil protection assets and civil-military assets was called for by all major actors
6. Situational awareness needs to be enhanced
7. Better insight into asset availability was key to capacity building and effective response
8. Improved logistics should be set up
9. Open access to training and planning to aid understanding and quality was wanted
10. Citizen engagement should be incorporated in response requirements
11. A shortage in infrastructure, technology and/or tools existed.

As the outcomes were collated, recommendations for improvement were classified into the four domains of Operations, Assets, Learning/Public Awareness and IT Communications. Within these domains, common themes for improvement arose, practical solutions emerged and, working with end users at a validation workshop, prioritization levels were introduced as shown in the table.

Conversation Clarifies
A further major benefit from this open dialog was better understanding of what was meant when actors spoke about interoperability, mutual aid, common doctrine or strategic oversight. The workshops presented the project team with its own challenge of "how to do a practical demonstration of a scalable solution".

The results were visualised and became the CRISYS Concept Model that illustrates how the four domains combine with the eight capabilities and the operational command and control sectors (3-tiered responsibility) to create the multi-layered and multi-dimensional crisis management process to be improved upon.

The Matrix
At the core of the concept was a second model, the CRISYS Operating Model that allowed the movement of data and information. The complexity of data provision and delivery is dependent upon the differing levels of data fusion meeting the three Strategic/National, Tactical/Regional and Operational/Local sector requirements. The COM offers a solution to this complex data task, providing an overview of all capabilities and serves as a guide for classification of capabilities, identification of available practices, technology solutions and tools. The model is the core of the CRISYS Concept Model and seeks maximal reuse of legacy systems with readily available tools and technologies.

The COM has three main functional layers:
1. A Command Reconnaissance, Planning and Deployment layer representing preparedness to continuously ‘listen' to the undisturbed environment for signals that, when activated, opens a continuous loop crisis response management cycle that in turn creates the deployment plan.
2. The Data Collection, Storage, Transformation and Distribution layer meeting the hunger for data from many sources that differ in semantics, syntactic, protocols and technologies. This is the ‘information highway' of advanced communications and data capture and has functions for translation of data incompatibility, storage and fast search purposes, access authorization for security purposes and multi-channel delivery and distribution.
3. The Dynamic and Static Data Supply layer where data is collected without suppliers having to comply with fixed standards and protocols and where data can come from any type of device, instrument, system or source as data, audio, video, imagery, email or in any other processable format, so enabling citizens to be involved in recognizance and response.

Threats Abound
The final part of the project was to construct three demonstration scenarios that reflect Europe but are also transferable to global humanitarian aid efforts, showing how the proposed models would work in practice:
1. Earthquake Scenario: this scripts an earthquake event in a remote area with limited accessibility and represents one of the more frequent EU disasters of earthquakes or landslides. This tests the eight CRISYS Operating Model capabilities on their qualities for deployment in a harsh, remote area.
2. Toxic Gas Release Scenario: the second scripts an ongoing escalation of threats of different nature and impact in a densely populated, diverse habitat. It represents the less frequent but high-impact EU disaster scenario of failure, both technical and man-made.
3. Coronal Mass Ejection Scenario: the third scripts an extreme natural event in an urban location, is new and tests the COM's capabilities to handle sustained operation during a long aftermath period of multiple serious health and safety risks for large numbers of people while vital rescue and infrastructure services fail, bringing long periods of continuous data capture and high level intervention by many agencies.

Meeting the Challenge
The study has clearly shown there are real possibilities to improve. The suggested 4-year Road Map will provide adequate proof of concept that enables the CRISYS Concept and Operating Models to give improved crisis management capabilities. Primary among those calls are the engagement of the citizen, a single framework and easier access to better tools. Users also made it clear that their localized risks, the high cost of obtaining and maintaining existing assets for meeting those threats, the practical aspects of training and the cooperation practices they already undertake require constant investment in material and human resources. If we are to improve crisis management, the solution must therefore be imaginative and acceptable to those who look crisis in the face.

The scope of this study is very comprehensive and unfortunately too long to be published in full length here. We have therefore made the unabridged version available online at www.crisys-project.eu.