EUC / CERIDES is pleased to announce the successful implementation of the Full-Scale Exercise on Forest Fires response, which was conducted within the context of the DG-ECHO – funded PPRD East 3 Initiative. The exercise was organised by the Emergency Management Agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, and it took place at the outskirts of Tbilisi, Georgia, between the 14th and the 16th of June 2022.
PPRD East 3 aims to increase the resilience to disasters in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine. PPRD East 3 supports the development and adoption of an early-warning and early action – based disaster preparedness approach. This approach was practiced during the PPRD East 3 FSX, which aimed to strengthen inter-institutional and regional #coordination, as forest fire is a prominent risk in all partner countries of the Caucasus Region.
Several experienced members from the CERIDES Team and the HOPE Consortium supported the implementation of the PPRD East 3 FSX. In particular, Dr. Christos Dimopoulos, CERIDES co-Director, acted as a guest member of the Exercise Evaluation Team, while Mr. Evangelos Katsaros, CERIDES Research Associate, was invited to participate as a member of the Exercise VIP Team, with a responsibility of strengthening the ties between the two regional exercise preparedness projects in the area of Caucasus.
The collaboration between the PPRD East 3 Programme and the HOPE FSX Project significantly enhanced the cross-border preparedness culture between the countries of Georgia and Armenia, and between all countries in the Caucasus region. This impact was also particularly important for Europe, because both these projects are funded by DG ECHO – the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.
The HOPE FSX project is funded by the Directorate-General (DG) for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations – (ECHO), through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (Call: UCPM-2021-EXT). CERIDES acts as the Coordinating Organisation for this project. The aim of the project is to improve civil protection preparedness and response capabilities of Armenia in dealing with large, complex disasters that require joint response coordination facilitated via the Union Civil Protection Mechanism and INSARAG. South Caucasus countries’ efforts for sustainable development are clearly threatened by a devastating earthquake. Thus, sharing capacities, capabilities and resources, scientific support decision making, use of proven innovative tools, and joint training / exercising can lead to radical improvement of international cross border cooperation procedures of the Mechanism.
The CERIDES Team responsible for the management, coordination, and implementation of the HOPE project, comprises of the following scientists:
Mr. Evangelos Katsaros (Project Manager)
Dr. Christos Dimopoulos (Scientific Manager)
Dr. Georgia Solomonidou (Research Associate)
Professor George Boustras (Scientific Advisor)