FIRE & WATERPROOF. Cooperation of the civil protection services of Lublin and Rivne

The strategic goal of the project is to increase the resilience of the security system of cities against threats resulting from climate change and countering local risks of anthropogenic nature, by: 1. Increasing the level of safety of residents and the resilience of fire and flood protection systems 2. Intensifying cooperation between the civil protection services of both cities through the exchange of experience and developing joint solutions to respond to threats 3. Increasing the level of knowledge of the inhabitants of Lublin (LP) and Rivne (PP) on the threats resulting from climate change thanks to educational activities like press releases, online articles, sharing publication of "Rules of conduct in various emergency situations in the context of climate change and crisis situations" - in PL and UA. More educated individuals may be better equipped to understand the complexities of climate science and have more awareness of the risks of climate change The implementation of the project results from the needs that are indicated in many documents of operational and strategic importance for the cities. Lublin's strategic and operational documents raise the issue of adequate preparation of the city for flood hazards, indicating areas the most exposed to flooding. Rivne's main need is the need to adapt the fire protection system to the requirements related to the local government reform in Ukraine, as a result of which the area of operation of the municipal fire brigade is to be successively increased, especially from 2020, when the village of Kwasylów joined the Rivne Territorial Commune, which not only increased the area of the commune, but also extended the response time to fires by municipal rescue services. The main project outputs: - 2 emergency service units equipped to carry out rescue and disaster recovery operations (1LP and 1PP) - 200 participants of the training workshops (4 different activities, 25 participants per partner at each workshop) - approx. 6300 ha of area covered by protection measures against wildfires in Rivne - investments in new or upgraded disaster monitoring, preparedness, warning and response systems against natural disasters – approx. LP:300K PLN, PP:10M UAH, which amounts to approx. 318 181 Euro. The main project beneficiaries are: - 2 emergency service units (1 LP,1PP) - approx. 492K citizens (approx. 242K LP and 250K PP) Significant challenges faced by the cities include adapting to climate change, mitigating, detecting and warning about natural and anthropogenic hazards. Adapting to these changes necessitates solutions development, risk management, boosting rescue services' expertise and raising public awareness about potential threats. In light of potential risks such as anthropogenic disasters, industrial accidents and, in case of Ukraine, missile attacks, there is a burning need for essential activities that would minimise their impact and educate the public on emergency response. The cross-border approach is essential for effectively security management and climate resilience. The urban area is characterized by different urban ecosystems that interact with different institutional levels, including different stakeholders and decision-makers, such as public administrations and governments. This can create many institutional conflicts in planning and designing the urban security. It would arguably be ideal for an urban area to be planned like a socio-ecological system where the urban ecosystem and institutional levels interact with each other in a multi-scale analysis. This work embraces a planning process that aims at being applied to a multi-institutional level approach that is able to match different visions and stakeholders’ needs, combining bottom-up and top-down participation approaches. In this way, the bottom-up and top- down approaches are useful to match the need of the community that uses the area with the vision of urban space development of decision-makers.