The VOLFIRE project was carried out with the objective of giving occupational training to a group of professional firefighters in Antalya to start volunteer firefighting and establish volunteer fire brigade stations in the settlements where professional firefighter employment is not possible, and the population and the possibility of fire and rescue incidents is low, thus reducing the loss of life and property in case of fires, disasters and emergencies in these rural areas will be possible. The project was also aimed to develop a model for other regions to start volunteer firefighting with certain standards. The project was carried out in the coordination of Antalya Metropolitan Municipality Fire Brigade Department and Governorship of Antalya from Turkey, Fire and Rescue Service of Ljubljana (GBL) from Slovenia, Mayo County Council (MCC) from Ireland and The Czech Association of the Fire Officers (CAFO) from Czech Republic worked on this project as partners. Within the scope of VOLFIRE, the voluntary firefighting systems of 3 European countries was examined and adaptation to Turkey has been planned. The objective of this project is to improve the vocational capacity of the trainers based on European Union standards. Vocational training will increase the competences of trainers and exchanging experiences and knowledge will be the main priority of this project. The main priority of the project is to ensure safe, fast, coordinated in joint disaster/accident response whenever needed. That includes both, professional and volunteer rescue services response and possible implementation of volunteer services establishment where needed. In some areas of European Union fire services are well organized, as volunteer and professional services are working hand in hand for decades, mainly based on tradition in cultural inheritage. This makes providing for efficient and integrated guidelines services and flexible learning. A special guideline has been prepared for volunteer firefighters and firefighter candidates in the project. This guideline contains important firefighting and rescue techniques and images for a volunteer firefighter in such cases fire, traffic accident, search and rescue, first aid etc. Tools have been created of ICT based e-learning program and online communication. The e-learning module was added to the project's website in 4 different languages which developed by the Slovenian project partner with the support of all project partners in order to keep the knowledge alive for targeted groups and to ensure the continuity of their education. It includes training documents, educational and tutorial short videos and exams to test people's knowledge. For the training of volunteer firefighting; A total of 38 hours of training curriculum containing 12 topics were developed under the responsibility of the project coordinator with contributions from all project partners. In order to carry on the activities effectively and on time, a Project Guideline for Effective Collaboration (PGEC) was developed and delivered to each partner organization when Partnership Agreement was signed with them. Program rules, work packages, responsibilities were explained in PGEC and served as a guide for each partner through the project term. 16 short videos have been prepared by GBL in accordance with the voluntary firefighting education curriculum to be used in trainings. These videos were uploaded via e-learning module together with other training documents and also will be use for the subsequent training of volunteer firefighters. Analysis has been carried out to initiate voluntary firefighting practices in Antalya where firefighter employment is not possible and the population is low and accordingly, probability of fire incidents occur less likely. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the adequacy of present fire stations and its personnel in Antalya city province and to determine the number of fire stations and volunteer firefighters needed by each. This analysis has been prepared via the executive function of MCC with the contribution of all project partners. MCC has been prepared an evaluation report containing following topics; the nature of project management, clarity in defining project objectives, planning the activities of the project, managing the progress of the activities; management of the cooperative work of the partners, adaptation to time and milestones, and TPM administration and so on. These evaluation reports have been distributed to all partners. Owing to these reports, the opportunity to evaluate the strength of the success of the project has emerged. These collaborations will ensure gains to be obtain advancing the ties of friendship between both groups in European countries and Turkey, developing capacity to do business, transferring of knowledge and skills, enhancing present environment of trust and so on.

The number and severity of disasters are increasing in Europe, due to climate change, ageing of industrial facilities and infrastructures, geo-political instability, poor knowledge management for critical activities and the vulnerability of the population exposed (density, age, migration…). To face these challenges, firefighters, rescuers, emergency medical responders and civil protection staff, have to implement effective and affordable solutions to support their operations. The DIREKTION project will establish and implement mechanisms and procedures to enhance knowledge sharing by directing the development of innovative technologies answering the needs of practitioners and policymakers. The steering role of international organisations (CTIF, FEU) and end-users will guarantee useful and practical results. The project starts with the deployment of tools assessing the relevance and interoperability of innovative technologies developed by EU Horizon projects. A structured analysis of needs and gaps and the screening of potential solutions will then be undertaken. The procedures will use the outcomes of projects like FIRE-IN, DRIVER+ / CMINE, MEDEA, the pilot for the Network of European Hubs for Civil Protection and Crisis Management and will follow the taxonomy of the EU security market study to ensure a structured use of results. Based on the capability-driven evaluations and a detailed analysis of the opportunities and constraints for the uptake of innovative solutions, DIREKTION will establish priorities for future research programming and capacity building. Moreover, the project will further establish networking and dissemination opportunities of interest for the DRS community in close collaboration with industry, SMEs & start-ups, research organizations and practitioners, at EU and national levels. DIREKTION will strengthen current practice and future research and innovation planning in disaster resilience.

"<< Background >>The province of Antalya is Turkey's fifth-largest city with a population of 2.5 million people. During the summer period, the population of the province becomes 5 million. Antalya Metropolitan Municipality Fire Brigade Department serves 21.109 km ². 57% of this area is covered with forests. The responsibility of responding to the fires in the remaining 43% belongs to Antalya Fire Brigade Department. Looking at the last 5 years (2016-2020), a total of 65181 fire and rescue incidents have occurred and 40296 of these incidents are fire incidents. When the percentile is calculated, fire events in the last 5 years were calculated as 61.8%. Antalya Fire Brigade Department intervened in all of these fire incidents. According to the “Municipal Fire Brigade Regulation"" published in the Official Gazette dated 21/10/2006 and numbered 26326, the report to be kept after the fire incidents must be prepared according to the format attached to the same regulation At the same time, this report is requested by the judicial authorities and used in all kinds of legal affairs and transactions.In the mentioned Fire Report, it is requested to determine the cause of the fires. However, there is no organization neither unit that can determine the cause of the fires in Turkey. Therefore, when this project realized for the first time be able to determine the causes of the fires in Turkey. In addition, a criminal unit within the fire department will be established. This unit will be a first and exemplary.<< Objectives >>When we look at the research for the fire investigation in Antalya; investigating the cause of the fires, there is no organization neither unit that can determine the cause of the fires in Turkey. Therefore, no model could be found for the criminal unit to be established in Antalya Fire Brigade Department. However, the system to investigate the causes of fires is widely applied in the fire brigade of many countries.With this project, by transferring examples of good practices related to investigating the causes of fires in the fire brigades of EU countries;•To minimize the problems encountered after the fire intervention,•To examine the reasons of fires in detail and to maximize prevention,•To be a role model in In Turkey.•To be a role model in In Turkey through the delivery of Fire Protection/Prevention.•To enhance the safety of our community through Community Fire Safety initiatives<< Implementation >>1) Announcement and presentation of the project with the opening conference.2) Training programs on fire causes investigation in the fire brigades of the partner countries; reorganization following the legislation of Turkey and Antalya Fire Brigade and making them into the curriculum of training.3) Training of trainers to 20 trainee candidates theoretically and practically by the firefighters of EU countries according to with the help of experiences related to the events they encounter in the fire brigades and to study of the criminal examples about fire causes investigation.4) Firefighters who receive training abroad Providing pilot training to the firefighters who will perform fire scenes investigation in Antalya province.5) Observation and evaluation of trainings and meetings.6) Other fire brigade department in Turkey are given information about the project seminar and symposium.7) Executives managing the fire brigade department in metropolitan municipalities and provincial municipalities in Turkey and people in the management staff of the said municipalities will be invited to Antalya and a seminar will be held.8) A seminar will be held digitally within the scope of Erasmus + and European Solidarity Program (ESC) priorities to be implemented between 2021-2027. This seminar will be given to those who have received voluntary firefighting training in the Vocational Training of Firefighters to Enhance Voluntary Firefighting (VOLFIRE) project, which is the coordinator of the project, Antalya Metropolitan Municipality Fire Brigade Department, which received a grant in 2016 (Project number: 2016-1- TR01-KA202-034321).9)Announcement and dissemination of the project with the closing conference at the end of the project.<< Results >>Fire Scene Inspection Training Document will be prepared as a guideline for the fire brigades as project output. At the same time, the target group will be enabled to participate in the e-learning program with the ICT-Based Training Module. In this way, they will be able to have continuous vocational training. With the short videos to be created, educational material about fire scene investigation will be created. Research, analysis, and transferring the good practices associated with the transmission of the training program will investigate the cause of the fire under fire brigades will be created a unit for the first time in Turkey. This unit will serve as an example to Turkey. In addition, with the help of this unit established at the end of the project, the Antalya public and indirectly will accelerate the judicial process. With the help of these examinations, the causes of fires will be examined in detail and statistics will be kept. In this way, awareness-raising programs can be organized on the people of Antalya in order to ensure that fire precautions are taken according to these reasons, not only to investigate after the fire. In addition, when a fire occurs, large amounts of harmful gases (CO2, CO) are released. These gases increase the amount of carbon emission in the atmosphere and this contributes to global warming that causes global climate change. Awareness-raising activities will be carried out to determine the causes of these fires and to take precautions in this regard."

FIRE-IN has been designed to raise the security level of EU citizens by improving the national and European Fire & Rescue (F&R) capability development process. FIRE-IN addresses the concern that capability-driven research and innovation in this area needs much stronger guidance from practitioners and better exploitation of the technology potentially available for the discipline. We argue that this is to be achieved by practitioners more effectively coordinating on operational needs, on available research and innovation, on standardisation, and on test & demonstration and training. Further, we claim the need for the development of a common research culture that is to be achieved by better cooperation between practitioner and research/industry organisations. FIRE-IN addresses these objectives through four main areas of activity: (i) the identification and harmonisation of operational capability gaps based on the contribution provided by a significant and heterogeneous practitioner network, (ii) the identification of promising solutions to address those gaps through monitoring and screening of research outcomes and the continuous involvement of research and industry representatives, (iii) the definition of a F&R Strategic Research and Standardisation Agenda (SRSA) based on the previous elements as well as (iv) the development of a concept for more efficient use of test & demonstration and training facilities to support innovation and joint skill development. The overarching result of the project will be a proven process for organising F&R capability-driven research based on a wide practitioner and research and innovation network. The network will be linked at cross-domain and cross-border level and will feed harmonised operational requirements (or challenges) into national and EU capability development, i.e. research, innovation, procurement and standardisation programmes.