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The 112 Newsletter, Issue 16 August 2006
European Emergency Number Association - EENA 112
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If you believe our action can contribute to improve 112 services in Europe, feel free to support the association. EENA is a non-for-profit assocation only based on voluntary contributions.
Why is it so essential to get quality criteria for the all 112 chain ? To avoid this...
The facts:
Why is it so essential to get quality criteria for the all 112 chain ? To avoid this...
The facts:
June 2005: Commissioner Viviane Reding sents to the 25 Member States a questionnaire on the implementation of the 112.
September 2005: During a meeting at the DG InfSo, EENA insisted once more that the EC should verify the answers recieved from the Member states. Answer from Viviane Reding services was: "EC trust the Member states and can not verify whether the 112 is efficently implemented or not on a basis of quality criteria"
October 2005: During her press conference where she announced that the 112 has become her political priority, Commissioner Viviane Reding distributed the "Synthesis table of the 112 implementaion". The first line of this document states that in Belgium localisation from mobiles is implemented. The same assertion was made on February 2006 in the 11th Report of the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the implementation of the Telecommuncations Regulatory Package.
April 2006: Mr Alain Courtois, Member of the Belgian Parliament asked the Minister of Interior: "Regarding the legislation in force, the Universal Service Directve forsees that all the calls to the 112 have to be located. Is it the case in Belgium ? If not, do you plan to set up quality criteria (geographical accurracy and time transmission data) ?
June 2006: One year after the assertion of Commissionner Reding, the reply of the Belgian Minister of Interior is: "Only calls from landline are located..."
NO COMMENT
Read the related documents here below
Synthesis table of the 112 implementation, distributed on the 11th October 2005. (56KB)6th JEMU, European Seminar on Emergency Medecine, is taking place in Brussels for the first time.
This JEMU has the unique dimension of a days' debate and audience with MEPs actually in the Main-debating chamber of the European Parliament on the first day the 23 rd November.
(Places will be limited and the level of security will be high so early booking is strongly recommended)
A number of important Emergency Medicine themes will be aired: Hospital and pre-hospital care, Epidemiological and socio-economic dimensions, Working conditions and Major Incident cross border co-operation.
There will be no better forum to share our concerns with the Politicians that can actually influence the solutions to our Problems.
EENA at the European Parliament
One year after the petition posted to the European Parliament, EENA received a reply. The Committee on Petitions considered our petition and decided that a discussion on the issues we raised would be scheduled for its 13/14 September meeting. Any organisation or individual who would like to attend this meeting can contact Olivier PAUL-MORANDINI by phone +32 (0)475 84 00 82
COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN AUTHORITIES TO CITIZENS
Early warning systems
The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR) is a group within the UN with the mandate to coordinate among the several groups within the UN, the specialized agencies of the UN system, and some other organizations that work very closely with the UN system.
They have very recently concluded a survey on early warning system related activities under the different agencies and organizations, and produced a report that contains a number of recommendations concerning follow-up activities by the different organizations.
London 7th July Bombing
...The most striking failing in the response to the 7 July attacks was the lack of planning to care for people who survived and were traumatised by the attacks. Hundreds of people were left to wander off from the scenes. An estimated 1,000 adults and 2,000 of their children are likely to have suffered from post-traumatic stress as a result of their experiences on 7 July. 3,000 others are estimated to have been directly affected by the explosions. The majority of them are still not known to the authorities, are not part of any support network of survivors, and have been left to fend for themselves. Those who are known to the authorities in some cases received excellent care and support
following 7 July. Others registered their details but received no follow-up contact, and no advice or information about the support that was available...
The same report also critisized the state of the emergency communications (or rather the lack of them) at all levels of the London emergency services.
CHORIST
Integrating Communications for enhanced environmental risk management and citizens safety
CHORIST is a project funded by the European Commission which addresses Environmental Risk Management with relation to natural hazards and industrial accidents.
It is part of the 6th framework programme of the European Commission (2002-2006), under the thematic priority 2 (Information Society Technologies), of which it answers the call for proposal 5 published 18 May 2005, and more especially its strategic objective 2.5.12 titled "Information and Communication Technologies for Environmental Risk Management".
A CHORIST system will be developed from 2006 to 2008, and validated in 2009 with the Civil Protection in Spain.
A CHORIST system aims at:
1. delivering alerts from heterogeneous sensors, multiple specific agencies and citizens to authorities,
2. dispatching warning and information messages from authorities to citizens in risk areas and,
A CHORIST system will be developed from 2006 to 2008, and validated in 2009 with the Civil Protection in Spain.
A CHORIST system aims at:
1. delivering alerts from heterogeneous sensors, multiple specific agencies and citizens to authorities,
2. dispatching warning and information messages from authorities to citizens in risk areas and,
3. providing rapidly deployable voice and high data-rate communication means to field response teams.
In details, a CHORIST system will integrate:
1. A fully integrated, reliable and performing alert chain delivering alerts to authorities with inputs from heterogeneous sensors, disparate agencies and citizens;
2. Heterogeneous communication means (radio, TV, sirens, GSM) to dispatch messages from authorities to as many citizens as possible within the crisis area and with limited delay;
3. Secured, rapidly deployable and interoperable voice and high data-rate telecommunication systems (incl. ad-hoc networks) for in the field risk response teams.
The CHORIST project activities will be the following:
1. Involve users (Civil Protection Authorities, citizens and telecommunication operators) all along the project life, in order get their requirements and their feedback on the ongoing technical developments;
2. Derive technical requirements from the user inputs, then develop the three subsystems and finally integrate them into one CHORIST system;
3. Set up a demonstration in Spain to validate the proposed concepts and assess performances;
4. Promote the project to the broader scientific and user community.
more details in the next 112 newsletter
Emergency SMS text service for the deaf, hard of hearing and speech impaired
The Police Service of Northern Ireland Police has launched a new Emergency SMS text messaging registration scheme to allow the deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech impaired to be able to contact the Emergency Services in an emergency.