PEERS at the CERIS DRS Conference

Brussels/online, 7-10 November 2022

From 7 to 10 November 2022, PEERS participated in the Disaster Resilience Societies Cluster Conference organised by the Community of European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) in Brussels.

Prof. William Hynes (KPMG Future Analytics), PEERS Project Coordinator, together with Jon Hall (the Resilience Advisors Network) and Tom Flynn (TFC), PEERS partners, presented our project describing its scope, as well as the objectives and relevance it has for the Disaster Risk Reduction and CBRN Community.

On 8 November, during the session focused on CBRN, Jon Hall introduced PEERS as a standardisation project with some components relevant to the CBRN community: the creation of a cluster of CBRN-related projects, as well as the development of an ecosystem, as new innovative environment where standardisation will be brought to the CBRN practitioners, to support them in developing new effective practitioner-driven standards.

PEERS will shape and verify its ecosystem by developing three demonstrators that address global European requirements for standardisation in natural disaster and CBRN risk management, namely:

  • the development of a pre-normative standard for Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for first responders, based on common criteria;
  • the development of a pre-normative standard for medical countermeasures for frontline responders;
  • the development of a guidance for use of NATO CBRN standards in a civil protection context.

The day after, a session on “A fresh approach to support cost-effectiveness resilience, and discussion involving other projects and CEN” was held by Prof. William Hynes and Tom Flynn.
Prof. Hynes introduced PEERS as a new Horizon Europe-funded project aiming to achieve three core ambitions, i.e., to advance and reinforce existing policies through practitioner-driven standard processes; to strengthen preparedness and response in the fields of Disaster Risk Resilience and CBRN  through standardisation; to engage policy makers, societal standardisation and industry stakeholders to increase EU resilience to different types of hazards, creating an ecosystem and a consultation space through a collaborative process.

In the same session, Tom Flynn focused on the main standardisation issues PEERS aims to address.
In particular, the lack of sufficient experts in standardisation, the fragmentation of existing standards concerning public safety and security, the wrong understanding of pre-standards as a fast-track to standardisation, the high costs that are needed to be beared to implement pre-standardisation standards, the existence of too many standards that are not needed by the practitioners or that are outdated, as not in line with the current fast developing technologies.

Mr. Flynn also referred to the “2021 Action Plan of the European Commission” between civil, defence and space industries focused on the promotion and application of common standards across sectors that enhance interoperability and, thus, contribute to cost savings in terms of production runs, cost management and operational effectiveness.

In conclusion, PEERS cannot be considered a standard project, rather a new practice ecosystem for the development of standardisation processes at low cost.

We have a lot of people dealing with standards, but we miss the experts. As we deal with public safety, we need to tackle fragmentation. There are standards that nobody really wants. PEERS will contribute to a revolution for which practitioners will be empowered to actively contribute to the development of processes that are needed by them, at low cost.

Tom FlynnTFC Research and Innovation Limited

We have a lot of people dealing with #standards, but we miss the experts. As we deal with #publicsafety, we need to tackle fragmentation. There are standards that nobody really wants. PEERS will contribute to a revolution for which practitioners will be empowered to actively contribute to the development of processes that are needed by them, at low cost.

Watch the intervention of Jon Hall
Watch the interventions of William Hynes and Tom Flynn