In crisis and disaster management two factors contribute to success:

a) having the appropriate resource available in an adequate time, at the right location and
b) the action of applying clear authority, communications and directives.

In all cases, precise and clear communication is critical. Experiences of managing large scale crisis and disasters show that not only language barriers, but also differences in the organisation, practices,
tools and resources of disaster risk management create potential for miscommunication. Moreover, use of different terms for the same parameters hampers effective information exchange. In order to provide a contextual1 enriched overview on terms and definitions published by different type of organizations such as a standardization organization or the United Nations, this document was developed as a basis for a common reference vocabulary. 

On 12 and 13 December 2018, another PSCE conference successfully took place in Bled, Slovenia. The conference was collocated with three workshops addressing topics as varied as social media and crowdsourcing for disaster management, cross-border interoperability and 5G for PPDR.

The workshop on the use of social media and crowdsourcing for disaster management successfully took place on 11 December in Bled, Slovenia.

The event was organized by the E2mC consortium and constituted a great opportunity to gather stakeholders from heterogeneous backgrounds and engage in fruitful discussions on the use of social media and crowdsourcing for disaster management. More than 50 participants attended the event including Copernicus EMS authorized users, research institutes, industry, EU representatives and related project and initiatives.

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have taken key steps towards political agreement on rescEU, the plan to strengthen EU civil protection response to disasters. Following the political agreement reached on December 12th, rescEU will have to be formally approved by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. The aim of rescEU is to ensure that sufficient resources are available to respond to disasters with wide-ranging impacts and simultaneously affecting several countries while the costs would be covered by EU financing. The political agreement focus both on strengthening Europe’s capacity of immediate response as well as stepping up prevention and preparedness.