This spring, our partner, the European Emergency Number Association (EENA), organised their Annual Conference & Exhibition in Valencia, Spain.
The event took place the 24th to the 26th of April 2024 and was packed with informative sessions regarding innovations and legislative developments in the field of public safety. AWARE partners Telespazio France, Genasys, FDC, EENA and the Republic of Slovenia Civil Protection & Disaster Relief (URSZR) were present.
Since the conference brings together international experts in the field of emergency services and serves as a platform to share knowledge and experiences, attending and participating was the perfect opportunity for the AWARE partners to network and raise awareness about how Galileo Emergency Warning Satellite Service and the AWARE solution can address gaps in public warning systems and enhance the reach of public warning messages.
This year’s conference featured interesting sessions regarding developments in the field of public warning. On the 24th of April, Johnny Douvinet, Professor of Geography at Avignon University and Estaban Bopp, Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Lille, presented in a session entitled: “What makes an efficient public warning message?”. The presentation provided an overview of their research regarding feedback of emergency alerts sent by Cell Broadcast (CB), which revealed that a short, simply worded message was the most effective, and that training, practices, and drills were invaluable to accustom end-users and the population to the use of CB for public warning purposes.
Another session featured a panel discussion in Spanish entitled “Communication in large scale emergencies”. During this session, it was mentioned by an IT technical coordinator for CAUE 112 Extremadura that, among various means of sending mass-alerts to populations, satellite-based systems are the future. After the session he noted his interest in Galileo EWSS and staying informed regarding the progress of AWARE.
On the 25th of April, Alexandre Allien from FDC presented for AWARE in a session entitled: “Innovations in Crisis Management”. During the session, the Emergency Warning Satellite Service was presented, followed by an introduction of the AWARE project, the project status and the way forward.
In addition to presenting at the conference, AWARE also had a booth in the exhibition area, where AWARE partners networked with conference attendees and displayed one of the Genasys long-range acoustic device (LRAD) models. Many interesting interactions resulted from conversations at the booth, such as with FR-Alerts and NL-Alerts experts regarding the creation of a template on how to display alerts on digital panels (font, colour, logos, where to place information, what size, etc), and the experiences of displaying alerts on digital panels in the Netherlands. Both conversations will certainly be considered as AWARE moves towards the demonstration phase of the project.
The next EENA Conference and Exhibition will take place in Helsinki, Finland on April 9th-11th, 2025. This will be a great opportunity for AWARE to present updates regarding the development of the AWARE solution as the project moves towards its exploitation phase.
