Empowering Citizens by Considering their Feedback in Preparedness Plans

ongoing

The Empower-Citizens project will develop and test a solution for using feedback and lessons learnt, acquired by citizens, during disasters, exercises and simulations, in preparedness plans. The first-hand experience, tacit knowledge and skills gained by citizens during these events are significant. They act as spontaneous or organised volunteers, using their local knowledge, and social relationships with the local communities. They support people in vulnerable situations because they are physically and socially close to them. Through this unique position and experience, citizens can offer feedback and knowledge that are complementary to official professional actors, representing an important asset for the management of future events. This project will seek two main outcomes: i) integrate experience into the existing process of drafting and revising preparedness plans; and ii) actively involve the public in preparedness activities. The project will revise, adapt, and integrate existing practices for eliciting, selecting, filtering and aggregating experience and feedback from citizens, their communities and civil society organisations. These practices will be merged into a procedure for revising and improving preparedness plans, called “Citizen & authority Learning and Improving Preparedness Plans” (CLIPP). The procedure will be evaluated in the revision of two real preparedness plans in Italy and Norway. The project results will be scaled up for a wider application at European level and described in practical guidelines and support tools. The proposed project will build on past EU and national projects in which the members of this consortium have been involved as partners, consultants, or coordinators. The partners include: one SME active in the field of DRM; one social science research organisation; one NGO involving and empowering citizens; a national authority and civil protection organisation; two local authorities in Italy and one authority in Norway.