Standardization Gaps in European Disaster Management

The management of large-scale disasters, caused for example by natural hazards, industrial accidents or terror attacks, requires collaboration of different types of organizations. The organizations can use different equipment and tools, follow different strategies and procedures, or have different understandings of relevant terms. These differences, increasingly complex when it comes to international cooperation, can cause severe lack of interoperability that can result in vital time delays. An approach to increase interoperability in European disaster management is to standardize solutions, such as technical tools, procedures or terminology. However, standardization is not always trivial, in some cases it is impossible, in others there are challenges to overcome. In context of an EU initiative to facilitate and push standardization across all fields of European disaster management, an initial step was to gather standardization gaps in a comprehensive manner. Standardization gaps are the result of comparing end-users’ standardization needs with existing standards. Selected results of the gap analysis are presented in this article, and put into context of the general structure of disaster management standardization. Related challenges such as the proper involvement of all relevant stakeholders, and specific characteristics of the disaster management domain are addressed, and suggestions for a way forward are provided.