PEERS Glossary of terms

A brief and work in progress dictionary of terms ascribed to the Disaster Resilient Societies, CBRN and standardisation areas

Some months ago, a group of six Horizon 2020 projects led by the “Resilient Europe and Societies by Innovating Local Communities” project (RESILOC) collaborated to develop a set of disaster resilience terms and definitions with the aim of creating a glossary which other projects could use.

The initiative acknowledged that there were recognised sources for definitions, such as the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the European Commission (EC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and that individual projects were best advised to adopt threes rather than expend effort creating their own.

This led to the first Glossary of some 300 terms for Disaster Resilient Societies (DRS) projects being developed by what became known as the Societal Resilience Cluster (SRC) of projects. The SRC is a group constituted through the Community of European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) of DG HOME and enabled through the facilitation of the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE).

Our project PEERS, recently formed a new group of projects creating the CBRN and Standardisation Cluster (known as CSTAC).

As part of its work to create a new environment for those involved in standardisation in the context of its work, PEERS recognised that it needed to develop a more commonly accepted glossary of terms for all aspects of CBRN. On behalf of CSTAC, PEERS has now produced an extended glossary capturing more relevant professional terms.

Starting with the initial DRS glossary developed by the Societal Resilience Cluster, PEERS added those terms currently being used by the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism as developed through the project ENCIRCLE, later adopted as the “EU CBRNe Glossary”. Incorporation of this work has created a new and larger glossary of terms appropriate to all researchers involved in the DRS, CBRN and standardisation areas.

The first draft of this glossary has now been published by PEERS and is available for open use by all researchers.

Go to PEERS Glossary of terms