This year has almost come to an end, and what a year it has been! Before welcoming 2019, we wanted to share with you some of the moments that defined 2018 – at least for us.

Before going through some of the 2018 milestones, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for being with us. Our community is the heart of what makes EENA tick. So thank you for your support and cooperation and we are looking forward to many more achievements together!

From all of us at EENA, happy holidays and a great New Year!

The EENA team,

Gary, Jerome, Cristina, Taviana, Benoit, Rose, Marta, Alexis, Alfonso, Petros

THE EENA COMMUNITY IN 2018

It’s January and the EENA team gets back to work after some holidays. Only a few days in the new year, CrisisTech is born: the first of its kind programme dedicated to start-ups benefiting public safety.

April brought the EENA Conference 2018 where a big announcement was made. EENA partnered with Corti in order to evaluate how artificial intelligence can help emergency call-takers detect a cardiac arrest over the phone.

And that wasn’t the only partnership that caught the eye of the emergency services community. After a year of pilot tests, EENA and Waze announced in May the results of our project evaluating how Waze anonymous crowdsourced data can contrbute to the work of emergency services.

The first semester of 2018 closed with some big – big – news. In a landmark decision in June, the EU reached an agreement on public warning systems being established in European countries. A few months later, the agreement was formally voted by the European Parliament to become law.

After a peaceful summer, September came. We organised our very first Drones & Public Safety Summit, bringing everyone together to debate the future of the technology. Moreover, the PEMEA project kicked off in sunny Madrid, an initiative to see emergency apps interconnecting between countries – in essence eradicating geographical limitations and improving people’s safety.

We are now almost at the end of the year. But by no means at the end of our work. EENA launched a brand-new membership in November 2018 specifically designed for first-responders willing to deploy (or already using) drones for their operations.

Last, but by no means least, December brought the most anticipated publication in the public safety field. The “Public Safety Answering Points around the world” 2018 edition was published yesterday for all EENA Members, with an abstract available for anyone interested.

Do you think that we left much out? We think so too… Stay tuned for our annual report to be published in January with details on everything that defined 2018 for the EENA community, together with resources, anecdotes and key figures about the field of public safety. Until then, happy holidays to all of you!