15th Crisis Management Days
This year Crisis Management Days have been held from October 22nd to October 23rd with the following activities:
October 22nd: Civil protection field exercise “VG earthquake 2022”
October 24th: Workshop “Development of crisis management through EU funded projects”
October 25th: Round table “Civil protection in the local community”
October 27th: Opening ceremony with three keynote speakers:
Vlatko Cvrtila, PhD: New World Order and Geopolitical Risk
Marinko Ogorec, PhD: Russian aggression on Ukraine and European Safety
Olha Sharan: Information warfare as the key element of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine
October 27th: Panel discussions and presentations on five main topics:
- Contemporary threats and new risks
- Corporate security
- Information and cyber security
- Psychosocial and health aspects of disasters and crises
- Green transition and sustainable development
Conclusions of the 15th Crisis Management Days:
– We live in the time of the global uncertainty and unpredictability mainly due to traditional threats, changes in environment, climate change, new threats and risks. It is evident that the modern world is faced with a different form of threats that require new joint methods of action. The ever-increasing complexity of the contemporary threats are presenting a new form of challenge before Civil protection System. Prevention and joint responses trough integrated approach to crisis management at the global or national levels require a systemic response. Also, some of the states have begun to adapt their foreign policies to a new architecture of international relations.
– Renewable energy sources contribute to the green transition, but they are insufficiently represented in the neighboring countries as well as in the Republic of Croatia. There is a rising awareness of the necessity to debate how civil protection could be directed towards solving the problems of the climate change. Ecological crisis is changing the basics of economic activities, both the behavior of the consumers and the producers.
– Information technologies help in the detection of crisis events, facilitate and improve risk assessment methods, with constant development of the modern protocols in the field of computing and information technologies. There is a high rise of awareness indicated on the roles and functions of information and communication systems in today’s society. The importance and role of adequate, secure and resilient infrastructure, activities that are necessary to achieve and maintain to ensure an appropriate level of information and cyber security are required. Autonomous systems based on artificial intelligence recognized the risk of false alarms caused by such systems as the biggest threat to the successful implementation of such systems. Systems that generate (and send to users) false alerts had resulted in users ignoring those notifications. The human supervision of such systems is still necessary. But even with their shortcomings they greatly facilitate detection and reduce response time to a crisis event. In matters of data protection, the most important engagement is the employees themselves. Interesting was the simple remark that we don’t like complex passwords, so we are an easy target for hackers.
– There is an ongoing progress in education on skills and mental health of the first responders and 112 system operators. Despite all the education and training it’s challenging to prepare to operate in a traumatic situation therefore measures aimed at eliminating the source of stress and preventing negative consequences should be taken. There is still insufficient education in crisis management among employees of hospitals which however differ from hospital to hospital. During the COVID pandemic the Sisters of Mercy hospital’s crisis headquarters formed a multidisciplinary team for psychological support for its employees.
– The road traffic safety strategy adopted by the government of Republic of Croatia in 2021 has led to a trend of reducing the number of people killed, as much as three times compared to 1994. The knowledge acquired on the medical response to major accidents course is crucial, along with the skills of the staff in the intensive care units of the hospital that cares for the injured.
– Technological improvement has been made in the field of UGV – unmanned ground vehicle development. The evolution of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) disasters and the potential threat has led Member and Participating States to agree on initiating a CBRN stream of work to increase the level of EU preparedness to CBRN disasters. UGVs and associated technical and logistical support will be able to operate in extreme conditions of CBRN accidents dangerous to the life and health of first responders and thereby reduce the victims, material damage and environmental pollution. There is still ongoing progress in the field of developing early warning systems, especially for the earthquakes, which are now using modern technologies such as mobile phones and its data.
– The common denominator of all the presented papers was lack of the safety culture among citizens and corporate subjects, which is the problem that should be more addressed in the future on a higher level.
– Emphasis was placed on understanding the importance of strategic documents for defining development priorities and goals that can be implemented through a project financed by the European Union.
