Jon Hall, Resilience Advisors Network

Two projects; SYNERGIES and PARATUS are making the most of opportunities to make their work count beyond the life of the projects, by building a bridge between their research and delivery of real-world impact through European pre-standardisation.

Through their common partner, the Resilience Advisors Network (RAN), UNI (Ente Italiano di Normazione) has been engaged as a national and European leader in standards development to help both projects achieve its goals.

UNI will work with the two projects managing the creation of a “CEN Workshop Agreement” (CWA) – a type of early, flexible, consensus-based pre-standard recognised across Europe.

As part of the agreement, UNI will:

  • Facilitate the creation of the CWA based on project results – notably, deployment of the emerging Stakeholder Hub hosted on CMINE which will deliver the tools developed by both projects.
  • Run the official standardisation process (setting up meetings, managing documents, handling public consultations, etc.).
  • Ensure that everything follows EU rules for standard development.
  • Engage stakeholders and experts from both within and outside the project.
  • Coordinate with EU standardisation committees for potential long-term adoption.

For SYNERGIES and PARATUS, this is part of the methodology by which their research will translate into practical impact. The CWA will allow the innovations (e.g. tools for disaster preparedness, systemic risk management, stakeholder engagement etc) to be shared more widely and hopefully to influence future European or international standards.

The full process is expected to take 15 months, broken into phases addressing:

  1. Drafting and approving the project plan (including a 30-day public comment phase).
  2. Holding a Kick-Off Event to align on goals and methods.
  3. Development, finalisation, and publishing of the CWA and
  4. Promoting the output to relevant standardisation committees for future use.

In the interests of sustainability and impact, agreement has been reached to ensure the free availability of the CWA on the CEN website after the end of both projects.

For further information contact ben.hall@resilienceadvisors.eu