Building on the Environmental Assessment Unit

ongoing

This Building on the Environmental Assessment Unit (BEAU) project is designed to upgrade the EAU to continue to offer its advanced expertise on sampling, analysis and impact of environmental emergencies to the ECPP for the coming years. The objective is to better respond to current and future international help requests after natural and environmental disasters. This is envisaged by upgrading three main areas of interest: materials, methods, and manpower. Moreover, recent deployments showed that EU visibility of the EAU experts is limited, BEAU also foresees in purchasing clothing and stickers carrying distinct EAU and EU logos. Materials: A reorganization of the packing strategy is required to reach standardized content, value and (distribution of) the weight of the crates. Methods: An extension of the EAU quick scan water analytics is needed. A spectrophotometer will be purchased, tested and integrated in the SOPs. Next to quick scan methodology, the feasibility of purchasing additional (mobile) analytical instruments will be explored. Manpower: The change in help requests and natural attrition demands recruitment, training and an extension and slight rebuild in composition of the EAU team and its back office. The increase in single person missions requires an upgrade of the back office with specialists in different fields of environmental and human health risks. This requires an extensive training schedule and coordination effort. As only capacity in the ECPP dedicated to mobile laboratories for environmental emergencies, it is crucial for the EU response to disasters that the EAU remains in a state of readiness and availability. All outcomes of BEAU contribute to the general call objective and BEAU will specifically contribute to the expected outcomes; “an increased ability of the EU to respond to disasters, through a strengthened European disaster preparedness” and “being able to intervene in more diverse operating conditions during international deploy