For a completely working Digital Single Market, effectively enabling the cross-border exercise by citizens and businesses of their Single Market rights, Member States must address several challenges on delivering better services. DE4A is a Member State-driven pilot, aligned with strategic eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 and EIF Implementation Strategy and with full regulatory compliance (SDGR, GDPR, eIDAS, Services Directive…), establishing a culture of co-creation, transparency, accountability and trustworthiness. Its goal is facilitating migration towards European Digital Public Services co-delivered across borders, across sectors and with different participants, reinforcing trust in public institution, and unleashing multiple measurable positive impacts on efficiency gains and reduction of administrative burden and costs. Starting from needs and capacities of Member States, DE4A’s scalable, holistic, flexible approach focuses on high-quality fully online procedures accessible through the SDG by building on an extended interoperability Toolbox and on state-of-the-art. It enables an open and comprehensive environment and platform for collaboration and innovation, leveraging common eGov baseline patterns for secure, privacy-preserving and trustworthy realisation of essential Once-Only and Relevant-Only principles, and with re-use of existing and new building blocks and Digital Service Infrastructures at national and EU-wide levels. Innovative technologies like blockchain, machine learning, self-emerging ontologies and zero-knowledge proofs will be addressed for effective sharing of common services. Pilots involving secure access to key administrative procedures of real life and business events, shall highlight aspects of the technical ecosystem available for the SDG implementation, prove their technical viability and gauge the performance and degree in which non-functional requirements can be accommodated. DE4A includes 23 partners and has a duration of 40 months.

The ongoing pandemic and climate crisis have taught us hard lessons about the systemic impact of compounding disasters. Stakeholders in disaster risk management are faced with the challenge to adapt their risk reduction policies and emergency plans but lack the tools to account for the cross-sectoral impacts and dynamic nature of the risks involved. The PARATUS project aims to fill this gap by developing an open-source platform for dynamic risk assessment that allows to analyse and evaluate multi-hazard impact chains, risk reduction measures, and disaster response scenarios in the light of systemic vulnerabilities and uncertainties. These services will be co-created within a unique transdisciplinary consortium of research organisations, NGOs, SMEs, first and second responders, and local and regional authorities. To gain a deeper understanding of multi-hazard impact chains, PARATUS will first conduct forensic analysis on historical disaster events, augment historical disaster databases with hazard interactions and sectorial impacts, and exploit remote sensing data with artificial intelligence methods. Building on these insights, PARATUS will then develop new exposure and vulnerability analysis methods that enable systemic risk assessment across sectors (e.g. humanitarian, transportation, communication) and geographic settings (e.g. islands, mountains, megacities). These methods will be used to analyse risk changes across space and time and to develop new scenarios and risk mitigation options together with stakeholders, using innovative serious games and social simulations. The results will be hosted on two stakeholder hubs related to crisis management and humanitarian relief, and provide stakeholders with a range of tools for risk reduction planning in dynamic multi-hazard environments. The service-oriented approach with active stakeholder involvement will maximise uptake and impact of the project, and help to increase Europe’s resilience to compounding disasters.

Natural and man-made disasters remind us how the ability of societies to adapt and prosper depends on the collective action of the whole society. But the significant role citizens and communities can play at the grassroots level has been overlooked in research. ENGAGE will turn this around, showing how individuals and local practices can interrelate effectively with planned preparedness and response, practitioners and technology. To achieve this bold goal ENGAGE will start with the knowledge, strategies, methods, tools and practices used by real world practitioners and citizens, and mature results from earlier projects. It will combine and extend these to create innovative solutions to disaster management and new ways of fostering trans-disciplinary collaboration and learning across disciplines. A model for assessing and methods for improving societal resilience will be complemented by an evolving knowledge platform providing actionable solutions meeting the diverse needs of authorities, first responders and citizens. ENGAGE will use empirical data on individual and collective contributions to societal resilience and take into account contextual aspects such as socio-economic conditions, digital literacy, culture, gender, social capital, trust and diversity. It will focus on aspects that can be directly enhanced such as risk awareness, communication, social media, citizens’ as well as authorities’ and first responders’ involvement. Real world field validations will be used to demonstrate and validate ENGAGE solutions and their transferability to diverse contexts across Europe. The consortium is complemented by a Knowledge and Innovation Community of Practice that already has 37 members and will grow during the project. This team includes representatives from authorities, first responders, citizens associations, NGO´s, SMEs, industries, schools and academia. Together, they will propose validated solutions contributing to specific SENDAI actions.

"The selection and evaluation of employees in terms of performance, personality profile and behavioral profile is a particularly important activity that has positive consequences when properly conducted or negative consequences if not done by professionals in the field with specific training. It is from this idea that we started to realize our project; we have proposed to provide modern, innovative and validated scientific instruments and to equally train the specialists for their use. The most important argument is to provide to decision-makers, valid profiles, accurate of the employees, so that they can make the most appropriate decisions. That is why we have developed validated techniques, methods and tools in different EU countries and have improved the VET curriculum for professionals in the field of staff selection and evaluation. The aim of strengthening European cooperation in providing tools, scientifically validated methods and staff selection and evaluation techniques has been achieved, because the intellectual results of the project were and will be used by direct and indirect beneficiaries from all partner countries in the project. We have also achieved our goals, so we have created a set of innovative techniques and methods for the selection and evaluation of law enforcement personnel and we have increased the skills of psychologists and recruiters working in the field of selection and assessment of law enforcement personnel through training on the basis of course support provided by the project partnership. Course support has provided a dynamic, practice-based and applicative training. Participants in the training were psychologists involved in personnel selection and human resource managers, professionals and recruiters for law enforcement organizations and institutions, researchers and trainer in the field, clinical psychologists. Most of the participants came from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, our partner in this project. Another goal was to conduct a research about how law enforcement organizations - in each participating country - are making selection of personnel. The research study was the basis for the development of a manual, the intellectual outcomes of the project, to be used in the scientific selection of personnel, with the necessary measures. Manual ""Scientific Selection of Personnel"" includes several chapters describing techniques, methods and instruments for evaluation and selection. The full benefit, which also ensures the sustainability of the project, was designing a e-learning platform, where have downloaded and will download video course, audio, articles related to scientific personnel selection, manual, course materials. The partners who participated in this project were the Psychosociological Center within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Romania, who make selection and evaluation of staff for law enforcement institutes, Rivensco Consulting, from Cipru, who make trained, courses and have a long-standing experience in making of optimal teaching techniques and CISES from Italy,a world-renowned company dedicated to development of tests and scientific methods for evaluating personnel. Efficient co-ordination of activities was ensured through the four transnational meetings of the project, monitoring reports have been made to identify the project's problems and the right solutions have been found where problems exist. All partners have focused on achieving maximum efficiency and impact on the project by implementing the proposed activities, coordination, reporting and evaluation to ensure smooth running. At European level, the opportunity to work and produce innovative techniques, methods and tools together with project partners has helped to consolidating intereuropean relations, as well as facilitating the implementation of quality standards in the field of applied psychology, in the field of security and national defense. The project also represented extraordinary opportunities for knowledge and intercultural learning."

The emergency medical care in the EU is a fragmented chain including population, emergency medical services, volunteers, hospitals and cooperation with fire services, police and authorities. It needs to prepare to respond to new threats and assist casualties after security incidents. In response to this challenge, NO-FEAR proposes to bring together a pan-European network of practitioners, decision and policy makers in the medical and security fields. They will collaborate to achieve a common understanding of needs, as well as - in collaboration with academia and industries – increase the EU innovation potential that could better fill the operational gaps and recommend areas for future innovations. NO-FEAR main objectives are to: - create a long-lasting community of practitioners, interacting with a network of suppliers and academia, - elaborate an innovation roadmap, with practical recommendations for uptake, - advise relevant Research and Innovation projects, - support market uptake of EU research results, - issue policy and regulatory recommendations enabling collective procurement, - indicate priorities for standardisation; - support quick wins and practical short term results, - implement a transactional dynamic portal providing fora, a catalogue, market place and flexibility to address new threats. The project will be conducted by a consortium of 18 partners, of which 11 and the coordinator are practitioners, under the advice of the EC Community of Users. It aggregates the various dimensions of the project (acute care, operations and training), supported by the already large networks. To disseminate and exploit the NO-FEAR recommendations, an ambitious strategy will be implemented, including workshops, demonstrations and communication events every 6 months. This will enable knowledge sharing, build a common understanding and promote innovation uptake by organising technology showcases and demonstrations in a real practitioner environment.