New Project: Public Safety Messaging for Border Regions

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Effective and coherent public safety messaging is essential to ensuring communities are prepared and public authorities can respond rapidly and efficiently in the event of hazard events (whether extreme weather events, major traffic incidents, flooding, regional power cuts epidemics).

Coherent public safety messaging and coordinated response is particularly important for peripheral cross-border regions where authorities and first responders in each jurisdiction might otherwise be following different protocols. Working closely with Monaghan County Council (Republic of Ireland) and the Cross Border Emergency Management Group, the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) will conduct applied research with the aim of advancing cross-border public safety messaging on the island of Ireland. This six month project will assess the current delivery of public safety messaging on both sides of the border, examine how public-safety messaging is perceived by diverse sections of the community and develop proposals for the improvement of public-safety messaging through an innovative citizen panel based co-design process. The analysis will follow a Prepare-Response-Recovery Framework, ensuring that all three emergency management phases are given due attention.

For the purposes of this project, I will lead an interdisciplinary research team with expertise in spatial planning, environmental psychology, marketing and community health. The research is funded by the Department of Defence via the Irish Government’s Shared Island Initiative.

European Spatial Planning: An Idea of the Past or Key to the Future?

Front cover of the book European Spatial Planning edited by Andreas Faludi, published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2002.

Reflecting on developments in European spatial policy over the past decades, the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) in 1999 might be considered the highpoint of European spatial planning. A third iteration of the Territorial Agenda of the European Union (TAEU) is currently under preparation, to be finalised under the current German Presidency of the Council of the EU (second half of 2020). The TAEU has, however, developed little debate and has had limited policy influence since the publication of its first iteration in 2007. The TAEU 2020, adopted under the Hungarian presidency in 2011 comprised a relatively strong endorsement of place-based or spatially sensitive policies at all scales within the EU. Emphasis was placed in particular on ‘territorial diversity’ within the EU and the scope for places to capitalise on their ‘territorial potential’ through regionally-specific development strategies:

“[The place-based approach] aims to unleash territorial potential through development strategies based on local and regional knowledge of needs, and building on the specific assets and factors which contribute to the competitiveness of places”. (TAEU 2020, 2011, Article 11).

Continue reading “European Spatial Planning: An Idea of the Past or Key to the Future?”
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