22/5/2008
Emergency evacuations across Europe could be transformed by academics at Aston Business School in Birmingham.
The
School has won a £0.5 million award, co-financed by the European
Commission (Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security), to
produce a ‘preparedness toolkit’ for mass evacuations in the event of a
major catestrophic incident.
The
project, which has been code named ERGO (Evacuation Responsiveness by
Government Organisations), identifies and transfers good practice which
will support the planning and preparation for mass evacuations that can
be implemented Europe-wide.
Dr
Duncan Shaw is the Principal Investigator with overall management of
the project. He said “The project will create a central knowledge
repository for preparedness of the public and Emergency Management
Agencies (EMAs) to mass evacuate, and initiates EU-wide collaboration
across EMAs, for example security, rescue and health services.
“Obviously
it is not feasible to create an emergency in order to judge the
response, so this research will address areas of modelling to predict
optimal public response, as well as achieving public preparedness, and
of course we have to factor in variations by country.
The
project runs for 3 years starting now and will involve several
workshops/conferences for government representatives at Aston, which
will bring not only revenue into the business school, but also to the
city.
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