Learning from the crisis during the crisis: That is the basic idea of Green Paper Special "Perspectives from the Corona Pandemic". Forum Public Safety & Security is the first think tank to present a self-contained work on crisis management, prevention, digitization, communication and social implications. Selected recommendations for action are presented in this workshop and discussed with the participants.

The resilience of society in precaution, protection and contraception can be sustainably strengthened from the experience of the ongoing pandemic. Forum Public Safety & Security (ZOES) brought together actors from the authorities and organizations with security tasks (BOS), politics, research and business in five thematic groups in order to develop good ideas for strengthening civil protection. The result is the Green Paper Special "Perspectives from the Corona Pandemic". Forum Public Safety & Security is the first think tank to present a self-contained work on crisis management, prevention, digitization, communication and social implications. Some of the proposals are new, and some of the solutions that have already been discussed are refined and their significance is underpinned. Co-authors of ZOES want to talk to all those involved in disaster risk reduction. The lectures focus on recommendations on management structures, smart management of bottleneck resources as well as psychological effects. ZOES has an impact on politics and will also place the proposals discussed with a view to the forthcoming formation of a new government. 

The workshop would like to emphasize the need for heat action plans in Germany, present concrete examples and point out barriers that have to be overcome if heat-related mortality and morbidity are not to increase significantly.

Heat Action Plans (HAP) are considered to be “the” essential instrument throughout Europe for preventing the loss of human life in phases of extreme heat (“heat waves”) and counteracting other heat-related health effects. With climate change, hot phases will also occur more frequently in Germany, last longer and be more extreme. The 93rd Conference of German Health Ministers of the federal states (GMK) in September 2020 therefore decided: "The health ministers and senators of the federal states consider it necessary to draw up heat action plans within a five-year period." referring to the municipalities, but also to the cooperation of all relevant actors. The workshop would like to clarify the need for HAPs in Germany, use concrete examples from various municipalities to present initial implementation variants and point out barriers that must be overcome in the near future if heat-related mortality and morbidity are not to increase significantly.

This workshop discusses how Covid-19 affects development efforts in partner countries, why we need to acknowledge systemic risks, and what we can do about it. (English)

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic at various levels in order to support its partners in acute emergencies, to secure development efforts and to learn from the crisis how risk management can be better designed in the future. In this workshop, GIZ will present activities and projects from on-site implementation, from policy advice, and from the development of new concepts for better crisis prevention. Together with the participants of the workshop, GIZ would like to exchange ideas about tools and experiences in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. The following inputs are prepared:
Crisis response in coping with the pandemic in Ukraine: How can German development cooperation support its partners in extraordinary crises without losing sight of the long-term perspective?
Covid-19 as a lens for systemic risks: how can political decisions regarding risk prevention in the sense of the Building Back Better approach be made more risk-informed?
Crisis prevention through awareness for fiscal policy for disaster risk management: How does a budget affect a city's capacities for better risk governance?

Wildfires have become a regular occurrence in Germany. In this workshop the State Fire Service Institute NRW presents its research and training efforts to identify potential wildfires, strengthen leadership training and improve operational capacities.

Wildfires have become more and more present in the public discourse during the past three years. Especially the large fires near Meppen 2018, Jüterbog and Lübtheen 2019 and Gummersbach 2020 show that wildfires increase in size due to prolonged. However, smaller fires near roads and train tracks are becoming an increasing threat as well, even in urban areas, as shown during the fire in the Rhein-Sieg county 2018. To better identify and assess risks, optimise operations and develop new tools in leadership training, the State Fire Service Institute NRW has increased its research and training capabilities at the intersection between science and practical application. A short introduction will present the structure and role of the State Fire Service Institute NRW within the field of disaster management. Following that will be presentations about the current research-projects “CCFireSense – Cloud-based Monitoring Supporting Wildfire Prevention near Traffic Infrastructures” and “ErWiN – Expansion of knowledge on ecology, forestry and technology concerning wildfires”. Lastly, the special role of the State Fire Service Institute NRW regarding training innovation will be presented during “Wildfire-training – Developments and Cooperation by the Wildfire Working Group”. 

Through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), the European Union aims to strengthen cooperation between EU Member States on civil protection and to improve joint prevention, preparedness and response to disasters. Living European solidarity, efficient and sustainable networking of actors across Europe and at different levels, as well as an interdisciplinary, cross-border and cross-sector exchange of information, knowledge and experience are now more important than ever in civil protection and disaster management. This is exactly the objective of the new Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network. It aims to support learning from the past and preparing for new dangers through the continuous exchange of experiences, expertise and innovation – i.e. “to build forward better”. The cooperation of civil protection and disaster management practitioners with academia, science and research is crucial to carry out evidence-based disaster prevention, to integrate the latest research results, innovative technologies (e.g. virtual reality/augmented reality) and teaching approaches (e.g. e- and blended learning) into civil protection training and practice, and thus optimise these.

The workshop is conceived as a moderated open online discussion of experts from various fields - civil protection, science, research and academia. It provides the opportunity to think about and exchange ideas on how an optimal networking between these fields could look at national, European or international level, and how the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network could contribute to this in its role as “knowledge broker & innovation catalyst”. This, also in the context of a two-part study on education in civil protection, which the BBK published in March 2020 as part of the project “Pedagogical Reconception of Education and Training in Civil Protection”. This study shows amongst other the need for a common understanding of education in German civil protection and sheds light on e-learning/blended learning approaches. The workshop is aimed at interested actors in civil protection and disaster risk management as well as experts from science, research and the academic field who deal with disaster management, disaster risk management, or similar topics.

How can emergency services prepare for incidents such as the 2015 Paris terror attacks or the 2020 Beirut port explosion?

This interactive workshop for practitioners explores approaches based on real-life examples and theoretical frameworks to prepare to and responding to complex large-scale mass casualty incidents in an urban context.

Cities are complex by itself. A mass casualty incident in a city becomes the worst-case scenario of problem-solving emergency management for all actors involved. Problem solving of complex emergency management doesn’t start while managing the emergency – it starts with effective preparedness for response at all levels and in collaborative manner in a city.
But is it really possible to prepare for the worst-case scenario of a mass casualty incident in a city?

In this interactive workshop, our panelists will try to find an answer to this questions by examining – both – theoretical frameworks and real life examples from preparing and responding to large scale and complex disasters and crisis in cities in recent years.
While the Dr. Razzak from Weill Cornell Medicine College is presenting the CAMERA tool (city’s assessment for mass casualty emergency response developed with support of the ICRC), Dr. Amine Eddine from Lebanese Red Cross and Philippe Testa from French Red Cross will share their experiences and lessons from crisis preparedness and management of incidents in Beirut and Paris.

National and European civil security research contributing to better disaster risk reduction; invitation to participate in the network of German practitioners active in European security research.

The session demonstrates, how research on civil security contributes to better disaster risk reduction. But such research projects require the active participation of practitioners to develop innovative solutions that address the problems encountered in everyday practice. Practitioners are therefore invited to engage in civil security research projects on a national or European level. There, they can contribute their needs, help shape the development of social, organizational, or technological innovations, evaluate results from research at an early stage and build up their own research capacities.
The session first gives an overview over the national and the European security research programmes and showcases, how funded projects were active in flood relief in Germany in summer 2021. Then, three projects share their insights: a) project AIFER – Artificial intelligence for the analysis and fusion of earth observation and internet data for decision support in disaster management, b) project SORTIE – Sensor systems for locating trapped persons in collapsed buildings and c) project RESILOC – Resilient Europe and Societies by Innovating Local Communities. Finally, the network of German practitioners active in European security research (ForAn) presents itself and invites to participate. 

Our society is becoming more digital and thus more dependent on resilient digital infrastructures. At the same time, attacks on critical infrastructures are increasing and threaten the security of supply for the population.

The workshop will include keynote presentations on theoretical and practical aspects of critical infrastructure resilience and its importance for societal life and the requirements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
The presentations and the practical examples described therein are intended to create an awareness of the risks, needs and challenges of the digitalization of critical infrastructures. Solution approaches and recommendations for action are to be discussed with the workshop participants.
M. Hellmann describes in his presentation theoretical aspects of digital resilience and how it is applied in emergency planning and crisis response. Resilience theory is based on the four processual cornerstones of responding, monitoring, learning and anticipating, which can be used to describe the performance characteristics of resilient systems.
In his presentation, S. Pickl describes how complex reachback architectures can be used to develop early warning systems. In this context, the intelligent use of sensors will be of particular importance in the future. Ethical aspects in the context of "security and digitalization" will also be addressed.
M. Atug describes in his presentation the complex challenges in IT environments of critical infrastructures. For example, what does remote maintenance and remote access look like? What IT security challenges do critical infrastructures operators face and why?

Early warning and respective anticipatory humanitarian action can be used to protect agricultural livelihoods and support the fight against malnutrition. In this workshop we will present three practical examples from the African continent that all connect to that aim.While one project focuses specifically on drought as a driver, the other two also integrate a conflict component. The projects differ in their approaches in terms of target groups (e.g. pastoralists in West Sahel), project design (e.g. Forecast-based financing), methodologies and data used (e.g. the use of secondary data only). Therefore, they provide the basis for a discussion on the different dimensions of anticipatory humanitarian action. After the presentations, we will be discussing the different drivers of malnutrition and agricultural livelihood losses in a panel.