Euralarm recently participated in the Romanian Facility Management Association’s latest event. This event was on business continuity and facility management activities in case of an earthquake. Liviu Mateescu, Vice President of ARTS, introduced Euralarm and presented and debated Euralarm’s PEARS project and its importance during natural disasters like earthquakes.
The focus topic of the recent ROFMA Event in Romania was to improve and discuss continuity of facility management activities during earthquakes and to improve the level of professionalism of facility management specialist. This event was organized for facility management professionals in Romania and was exclusively for ROFMA members. Beside the presentation of Euralarm’s PEARS project, increasing resilience and development for facility management, seismic risk management for business continuity, planning of business continuity, the legal framework and measures, and specific activities for administrative and building operative staff in case of earthquake were studied and discussed.
These discussions showed that sharing data/information in the emergency management process is of vital importance for efficient operations. This is in line with the results of the PEARS project and the first ideas about a “European Emergency Communication” from the fire section of Euralarm.
Liviu Mateescu, from the Romanian Association for Security Technique, took the opportunity to present the PEARS-Alert4All concept. The project has learned that fire and security products not only can but also should be integrated into public alert systems. The extensive installed base could be easily upgraded to receive alert signals which could be utilized to activate audible and/or visual warnings. More sophisticated systems can convert public alert messages into intelligible voice messages or display the same message on PCs. Integrating existing safety and security systems into a public alert scenario could be a cost effective and rapid alternative to reach large parts of the population.
Since the first presentation of the concept in October 2013 the PEARS-Alert4All concept received positive feedback. End users such as firefighters, police organizations and crisis information centres were invited by the Euralarm project leader, Thorsten Ziercke, to contribute to the standardization groups CEN TC 391 and ISO TC 223 that are looking for experts from civil protection to make their standards even better.
