Disaster Resilience Days 2025: Fostering EU preparedness in uncertain times

All stakeholders must work together to build disaster resilience mechanisms in an increasingly dangerous world, participants urged at the 19-21 May 2025 “Disaster Resilience Days” conference organised by the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS).

The conference was held over three days in Brussels and attracted over 160 attendees on site, in addition to some participants from further afield who followed online. It brought together experts, policy makers and innovators from across Europe and beyond to discuss disaster resilience and technological advancements in crisis response and preparedness.

Disaster case studies highlighted by participants ranged from extreme weather and climate change to terrorist attacks. Innovative technologies mentioned included AI, drones and immersive digital platforms.

Key messages from the conference included the need for a collaborative cross-border response to disaster preparedness, resilience and response. This means, for instance, ensuring that first line responders, such as police and emergency medical or fire services, can communicate quickly across borders and with each other. Europe’s leading role in both research and policy development were highlighted, with a focus on flagship 2025 initiatives the EU Preparedness Union Strategy and the EU Internal Security Strategy, as well as development of the planned European Critical Communication System (EUCCS). The need for a multi-stakeholder approach to disaster resilience was a common theme, with calls to include for instance NGOs, schools, heritage groups, psychologists and local communities in the development of policies and strategies, along with academics, industry representatives and policy makers. Participants also urged a move from research and innovation to deployment in the EU, building on support from the Horizon research programme.

Eight panel debates over the three day event considered the topics of:

• Fostering preparedness for uncertain times: Innovative multi-hazard approach and climate resilience
• Strengthening critical infrastructure resilience: nature-based, digital and policy-driven solutions
• Engage, inform, empower: Co-creating risk communication strategies
• Secure communication for disaster resilience
• Road to innovation uptake
• International Cooperation in Disaster Risk Reduction
• Accelerating innovation uptake for on-site CBRN response to climate-exacerbated crises through European and Global Training Networks

Participants heard about seven key EU-funded disaster resilience projects over a series of demonstrations. Based in a range of EU Member States, these projects were: GOBEYOND, B-PREPARED, Patho-SAT, RESILIAGE, eNOVATION, TeamUP, and the PEERS Project.

Presentations of 19 May

B-PREPARED (Szekely Zoltan)

Empowering a Pan-European Network to Counter Hybrid Threats (Paivi Mattila)

FERMI (Sven Eric Fikenscher)

New Paradigm (Frederic Guyomard)

PARATUS (Funda Atun)

RiskPACC (Maike Vollmer)

SYNERGIES (Alessia Golfetti)

Presentations of 20 May

Destination Earth - DESTIN-E (Bertrand Le Saux)

Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Center - DRMKC (Giuliana Urso)

Driver+ (Marcel van Berlo)

EU Space Capabilities (Tobias Biermann)

Innovation uptake and disaster risk management (Giannis Skiadaresis)

PathoSAT (Ilias Gialampoukidis)

RESILIAGE - CORE labs (Rosa Tamborino)

Secure communication for disaster resilience (Oliver Seiffarth and Marie-Christine Bonnamour

Presentations of 21 May

Accelerating innovation uptake by first responders for on-site CBRN response to climate-exacerbated crises through European and Global Training Networks

eNOVATION and TeamUP

How to make CBRN Training Networks more strategic for key stakeholders

International Cooperation in Disaster Risk Reduction

SAFE (Andrea D'Angelo)