Justice & Safety Center Executive Director Dr. Pam Collins Invited to Speak at the First European Safety & Security Symposium
Brussels, Belgium June 6-7 2007 Eastern Kentucky University Safety, Security
& Emergency Management professor and Executive Director of the Justice & Safety
Center, Dr. Pam Collins, was recently invited to give a presentation at the
First European Security and Safety Conference.
Dr. Collins was one of the few American speakers invited to this important
European conference held in Brussels, Belgium on June 6 – 7. She delivered a
paper entitled, “The Efficacy of Emergency Communications & Interoperablity: a
U.S. Perspective.”
As a result of this conference the European Parliament is now pushing the
European Commission to support the use of an emergency number that can be used
across Europe.
The emergency number, 112, is meant to function similar to the way 911 works all
across the United States. Individual European countries will still have their
own emergency numbers that will be used for car accidents and other individual
numbers.
The vision for the European 112 number is that it will function on a much more
important and wider scale. In an era of terrorism, and climate change where
natural disasters are effecting more than one country, there is a strong need to
implement a number that can be used across borders.
Although the number is already in place, the European Parliament recently held a
press conference that suggested the European Commission has done very little to
support the promotion of, or multilingual capabilities of the number.
While some Scandinavian countries report nearly 100% knowledge of its citizens
of the new number, some countries, such as Greece, report only 7% of its
citizens know of the number. And while the Fins know of the number, they did not
know they could use the number outside of their own country.
