Things often turn out differently than expected
This saying perfectly reflects the year 2020. In the beginning of the year, two different offline workshops were planned by the WP2 - responsible for the development of training courses in disaster risk reduction (DRR) in the CASCADE project. These courses aim to increase the knowledge and capacity of civil protection experts and city planners.
The two workshops were planned to be organized in the city of Hamburg in order to test the curriculum for the training courses developed with the help of all participating countries under the direction of Frederiksborg Fire and Rescue Service. The first workshop "train the trainers" was planned for the Spring of 2020 and then finally in the Fall of 2020 the plan was to let "the trainers train the participants’ in the second workshop.
The ongoing corona situation made things quite difficult. On the one hand, all participating actors had additional important tasks in their home countries to tackle the crisis. On the other hand, traveling was restricted and the voting process was henceforth limited to telephone conferences.
As host of the workshops in Hamburg, the Hamburg Fire and Rescue Service (HFRS) carries out an internal project day in October to define the status quo and explore further the way into the future. Due to the fact that the workshops should include a high proportion of practical exercises the main question ‘is it possible to conduct an online workshop with the written curriculum and content?’ will be placed at the center of the considerations. Furthermore the written scenarios will be reassessed to what extent they may be presented theoretically in the context of a risk analysis. Unfortunately, the answers to our thoughts are relying on all participants in the CASCADE project and must be placed in the context of another vote. Although there haven’t been any personal meetings after March 2020, the planning process for the adaption of offline workshops in the course of the corona crisis is further approached and progresses.
In short, whether and to what extent a theoretical online course can take place at the end of the considerations will show the development in the next few weeks and perhaps even months, in order to meet the requirements of the participants.
