Orihuela City Council will host the first co-creation workshop of the European ‘TOGETHER’ project on June 1, an initiative funded through the Horizon Europe programme that aims to improve coordination and response to emergencies and disasters through new technological tools and joint management models.
Councillor for Emergencies and Civil Protection Víctor Valverde said the project was created “in response to the current fragmentation in crisis management”. He explained that its main objective is to “strengthen cooperation between administrations, emergency services, security forces, private companies and civil society in order to increase resilience to climate risks and multi-hazard situations”.
Valverde said the work to be carried out over the coming years will focus on creating a common tool capable of integrating the entire emergency management process, from prevention through to post-crisis recovery.
“What we are seeking is to improve coordination and move towards much more effective systems supported by data interoperability and artificial intelligence, so that the resulting tools are genuinely useful and operational when an extreme situation occurs,” he said.
To this end, Orihuela City Council, together with the University of Alicante and the other partners involved in the project, has organised this first co-creation workshop. The event will bring together representatives from public administrations, emergency services, security forces, private organisations, productive sectors and local associations.
The workshop will be used to analyse the current state of emergency management and examine how the different agents involved are presently coordinated.
“It is about putting on the table where we are now, how we would respond today to a major emergency and what areas we need to improve in order to be more effective,” Valverde explained.
Sergio Molina, who helped promote this first workshop in Orihuela, said the aim of the project is “to move from the fragmented solutions that currently exist towards a single integrated tool covering the entire pre-emergency, emergency and post-emergency process”.
Molina also underlined the importance of this initial co-creation phase, saying it will bring together “all the actors involved in the same space to share experiences, identify real problems and propose joint solutions”.
“If a new emergency caused by an extreme event were to happen today, we must ask ourselves whether we are truly prepared and how we would organise ourselves. That is the starting point from which this new tool will be built,” he added.
The workshop will last approximately three hours and will serve as the starting point for validating future governance and coordination solutions. Once the project is completed, these solutions could be applied not only in Orihuela but also in other regions and territories across Spain and Europe.
Orihuela City Council expressed its thanks to the University of Alicante and the other organisations forming part of the European ‘TOGETHER’ consortium, highlighting the importance of promoting initiatives that improve preparation and response capacity in the face of increasingly complex emergency situations.
