Between 12-14 September the RESILENS project partners participated in the 8th Meeting of the European Commission ‘Community of Users’ on Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies in Brussels, Belgium. The event comprised of a Plenary Session focusing on the Horizon 2020 ‘Secure Societies’ Work Programme 2018-2020, and a two-day joint Workshop entitled ‘Aligning the Resilience Related Research Efforts in the EU DRS Projects’.

This workshop served as invaluable opportunity for the various DRS7&14 projects – DARWIN, IMPROVER, RESILENS, RESOLUTE, SmartResilience, and SMR to discuss their common goal -working towards increased urban and Critical Infrastructure (C.I) resilience in Europe and the differing approaches each project have taken to achieve this.  FAC coordinates the RESILENS (Realising European ReSiliencE for CritIcaL INfraStructure) project. Over the course of the two days, Dr. William Hynes (FAC) presented the background, rationale and primary objectives of RESILENS, with contributions also from partners Gilad Rafaeli (MTRS), who provided an overview of RESILENS efforts to develop a European Resilience Management Guideline (ERMG) and associated Toolkit, and Andrea Corrigan (EMRA) who detailed the ERMG and Toolkit testing process in our three CI case study areas in Ireland, Germany and Portugal.

The RESILENS project also had a demonstration area during the event, where the RESILENS consortium could meet and discuss the project outputs with attendees from a wide range of disciplines and sectors – including DRS7&14 project partners, policy makers, C.I providers and operators, academics,  as well as representatives from the European Commission and the OECD.

We look forward to further cooperation and collaboration with the DRS7&14 projects over the coming weeks and months.

For more information on RESILENS, please see www.resilens.eu and follow us on twitter @resilens_eu