NEWS

The planned CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) specifies a framework that aims to cover the rapid assessment of damage in buildings and disseminate the related results/alerts to the command-and-control centres of the agencies that manage the emergency. The results of the Workshop will be used by:

• the security officers of the critical infrastructures that will be monitored for damages,
• the officers of the authorities that should be informed about a damaged building to coordinate the response activities, and
• the Command & Control system manufacturers and developers.

The planned CEN Workshop is aimed to develop two CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs):

• Draft title CWA 1- Semantic layer definition and suitability of EDXL-CAP+EDXL-SitRep standards for crisis management in Critical Infrastructures
• Draft title CWA 2- Emergency management – Incident situational reporting for Critical Infrastructures

This standardization initiative aims to develop a document that will provide a set of recommendations for the content, design and formulation of social media early warnings in crisis and disaster management towards the public.

While negative impacts of climate-related and other hazards on urban areas are widely discussed, their impacts on historic areas within cities and communities have not been studied extensively enough. 

The protection of critical infrastructure is essential in complex societies as the ones we are all living in. To  optimise the protection through prevention, CEN recently developed new standard EN 17483-1 ‘Private security services - Protection of critical infrastructure - Part 1: General requirements’.

Ingvild Næss Stub is the new Director for international relations and business development at Standards Norway. Ms Stub was previously State Secretary at the Prime Minister's Office since 2015, and, among other things, advised the Prime Minister on European policy.

CEN recently published new standard EN ISO 15253 ‘Ophthalmic optics and instruments — Optical and electro-optical devices for enhancing low vision’. The new standard specifies requirements for manufacturers of instruments for use by the visually impaired as low vision aids.

The objective of this CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) is enabling a respondent to a crisis to exchange information across jurisdictions, organisations and borders to other responders, while maintain full control of the information and while using their own terminology and symbology.

This CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) aims to define a cooperative framework and the required guidelines for stakeholders from multiple operational organizations to be able to exchange information on situational awareness and the status of the operations, as it is necessary in large-scale crises. 

This CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) is intended to benefit the cooperation among the EU and global wildfire management community, comprising incident commanders, fire officers, forest managers, personnel of the civil protection agencies and Emergency services.