27 representatives of the UCPM member and participating states met in the first in-person meeting of the UCPKN Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Science and Planning working group on 3 June in Brussels. The working group's tasks include to provide technical input on initiatives that strengthen the application of research in civil protection and DRM planning and operations, scientific knowledge, and innovative technologies.

The meeting, organised back-to-back with the 8th European Civil Protection Forum and the CERIS Disaster-Resilient Societies for Europe annual meeting to limit carbon emissions, was primarily designed to discuss four possible areas of work for 2024-2025, as cutting-edge needs to support a more resilient UCPM and implement the Disaster Resilience Goals:

Multi-risk and cascading impacts of disasters
Insights from behavioural sciences for DRR
Open Science and Open Data for DRM
Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict, prevent and respond to disasters

Participants of the DRM Science and Planning working group meeting

The four work topics are quite strategic and very interesting, but particularly ethics of AI should be highlighted in relation to decision-making. A person would need to stay in charge of the decision regardless instead of handing it fully over to an algorithm.

They were based on a thorough needs assessment done with the working group previously as well as, for example, on the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre's (DRMKC) 7th Annual Seminar's results. In addition, the meeting included updates on:

The finalised 1st cycle of DG ECHO's scenario-building initiative (article 10 of the UCPM decision).
The DRMKC's scientific support to UCPM policy and anticipatory analysis.
Destination Earth - a flagship initiative of the Commission to develop a highly accurate digital model of the Earth on a global scale - from the ECMWF.

The Commission will analyse the outcomes of the meeting and propose a way forward along with concrete deliverables, such as knowledge products or innovation labs, for science & planning in DRM. The fruitful conversation led to an overall consensus on the four work topics. More focused planning was requested and other avenues are to be considered, such as risks and ethics of AI. The Commission took note of the representatives’ comments and will sharpen the focus of some of the key topics for a next iteration of the planning.

The Agenda and Scoping Paper are available on the event page.

Similar national initiatives

A representative of France shared the COLLARIS Plenary Meeting, a capacity-building initiative to develop a sustainable European network of scientific, engineering, and end-user expertise related to unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in civil protection and disaster response.

Likewise, a representative of Italy mentioned a conference on human and social sciences for the civil protection on 23rd and 24th of September, that will invite all the social science industry of Italy. Another initiative aims to coordinate ROADMAP2 by collecting good practices.