Phenomena such as floods and fires have always been part of nature and history, but they do not need to become disasters. The FORETELL project emerges from the need to promote a culture of safety in Europe against natural calamities. As children are one of the most vulnerable groups, they must learn from early age about the risks in order to have a better chance to save their lives during dangerous situations. In this context, the FORETELL project exploits innovative technology-based learning strategies aiming to provide awareness, knowledge and develop essential skills necessary to cope with natural hazards, such as floods and fires. To this aim, flood and fire situations have been simulated and implemented as interactive educational games in an online 3D virtual world. The educational games have been designed according to scenarios of good practices in case of flood or fire. During the games the players are prompted to explore the virtual environment, interact with it, collect information, collaborate with peers, in some cases, and finally use their gained knowledge and critical thinking to resolve the dangerous situations. The online 3D virtual learning environment is attractive and suitable for children aged 8-15, fully supports English, Greek, Italian, Bulgarian and is accompanied with comprehensive User Handbook and explanatory videos. Additionally, the FORETELL project aims to empower the profile of the teaching professions to adopt novel approaches in teaching, providing teachers with open digital educational material about floods and fires which has been developed in the context of the project.The FORETELL consortium was set according to the objectives of the project and the required partners’ expertise to successfully carry out the planned activities. More specifically, the consortium consists of four partners from four European countries (Greece, Italy, Malta, Bulgaria). The partners act in the fields of Higher Education, ICT technologies and immersive learning, civil protection and citizenship empowerment of children. In detail the partners are: 1) Hellenic Open University in Greece (Project Coordinator),2) FELCOS Umbria, a non-profit association composed of Local Authorities and public, private and associative actors, which carries out activities for awareness raising and global citizenship education in Italy,3) Fire Safety and Civil Protection Directorate General in Bulgaria, 4) University of Malta, Faculty of Education & Institute of Digital Games.The implementation phase of the project as well as the dissemination and publicity activities that took place in all partner countries engaged a large number of direct and indirect target groups, such as members of schools associations, students and their families, educators, university students of Education Faculties as future educators, stakeholders focused on civil protection awareness and citizenship empowerment, public educational bodies, etc. The 3D virtual learning environment of FORETELL is scalable and open, so new languages and new scenarios could be added. The educational material of FORETELL is uploaded on a Moodle site so as to be open and available to public. All key outcomes and videos of the project, as well as the links to the registration page of the 3D virtual learning environment and the Moodle site, are freely accessible through the project web site (http://foretell.eap.gr/index.php/en/) and YouTube channel.

The DAREnet project is to support flood management practitioners across the EU Danube River region and from different disciplines to deepen and broaden their Research, Development and Innovation related collaboration (=RDI). DAREnet will build a multi-disciplinary community of practitioners, operating in a network of civil protection organisations, and supported by a broad range of stakeholders from policy, industry and research. Together they will build a transnational and interdisciplinary ecosystem to foster synergies, innovation and its uptake. One of the key-results of DAREnet will be a regularly updated RDI Roadmap highlighting promising innovation opportunities to cope with the main environmental and societal challenges of the region. It will provide concrete perspectives for the further development, industrialisation and uptake of innovations of highest relevance for practitioners. The Roadmap will be the result of a systematic assessment and prioritisation of promising innovations, including standard

"In view of the common mission of the three project partners organizations, which is to protect human life, the realization of this project provided a unique opportunity for developing an innovative, ""user-friendly"" and efficient common training system at EU and national level. Through the joint activities under the project and the transnational partnership each partner were able to contribute with their own experience and shared their best practices creating a unified training platform at EU level. Based on their needs, each partner are able to make the best use of project results and adapt the delivered outputs to a national level. The project was targeted at increasing the professional training capacity of trainers, working with children and youth in the field of fire safety awareness-raising, preparedness and fire safety skills. This was achieved by developing and integrating an innovative common training system at EU and national level through the exchange of good practices and existing trends in the three partner countries and by promoting cross-border cooperation.The Applicant organization of the project was the Fire Safety and Civil Protection Directorate General to the Ministry of the Interior of Bulgaria (FSCP DG) and project partners were: Estonian Rescue Board (ERB) and Youth Fire Brigade Suhl - Germany (YFBS). Each project partner trained 12 trainers from their country, which in turn can train children and youth fire teams (CYFT) in the field of fire safety and civil protection. In their work with the young target groups, the trained trainers can use educational-methodological materials (compliant and specifically adapted to children's needs and interests), which they developed under the present project. To ensure efficient and timely project implementation, each project partner established an internal Project Management Team (PMT), which was represented by a team leader and by a staff of experts having relevant expertise to the project activities. The PMTs of each partner held regular monthly meetings (at internal level) to discuss and report on project progress and eventual obstacles to project implementation and measures for overcoming them. At international level, the PMTs of each partner had meetings twice a year (Transnational project meetings) to discuss and report on project progress and to define future tasks and priorities. The results are: 1. Trained trainers through the exchange of good practices and transnational cooperation - 36 employees from the fire-rescue departments of FSCP DG, ERB and YFBS.2. Developed educational-methodological materials needed for the trainers to work with children and young people.3. Provided access to the educational-methodological materials.4. Provided educational - methodological materials, as well as access to the on-line training for educational Ministries (in Bulgaria, Estonia and Germany) to enable the results to reach to the widest possible range of users and especially teachers, who wish to integrate into the idea. 5. Conducted international competition (multiplier event) and supplied equipment.6. Conducted information campaign among the population to promote the project results. We developed: - educational books: „Mission 1: Education” and „Mission 2: Firefighters` games”;- educational games: „Firefighters` tactics“, ""112 Memory"" , ""Domino"", ""Rescue board game"", ""Peek & Guess"";- Song for Hydro;- videos and other promotional materials.The transnational partnership under this project had a double impact on two levels: both at EU level and at national level. Each partner contributed with their own experience in the field of training children and youth for fire safety and civil protection, but was also benefit from the experience and best practices of the rest of the partners. In this relation, each project partner was and still is able to apply the project results to their own respective training systems, which in turn provides a unique opportunity for each project partner to upgrade and strengthen their training capacity. Considering the open access of the project deliverable, the common training system outputs are available to fire-rescue departments in Europe and interested stakeholders. Through this project it was created a wide European network, which offers open access to a large number of interested target groups and enables future use of the project outputs and ensures project sustainability. Last but not least, the project established long-lasting partnerships and laid the foundations for future international initiatives in the field of fire safety and civil protection targeted at the youth and children. Through this project, it was created a fire safety and disaster resilience/fire safety and disaster awareness skills and responsible behavior in members of our societies, starting from the youngest ones. This in turn provided an excellent future recruitment base for fire-rescue departments."

Disasters vary in nature and magnitude, and there is a need to capture knowledge, experiences of previous disasters, lessons learned and promote culture of disaster risk prevention within a community.Education about disasters needs to be a part of every individual’s cultural heritage and the development of appropriate knowledge, values, attitudes and habits should be encouraged from early childhood and be inclusive. Education, public awareness and training are the cornerstones of approaches aimed at reducing vulnerabilities to natural hazards.It is fundamental to include vulnerable social groups such as children, youth and persons with disabilities in every stage of the disaster risk management and build stronger community resilience. Very often these groups are neglected or the necessary and needed attention is not provided. Also it is crucial to maintain a sustainable impetus among all the actors in every country from the civil societies to the governments, from the local organizations to the international organizations, with the HEI, the private sector and with the organizations and public bodies-schools work with people with disabilities included. If Disaster Risk Management (DRM) legislation, drills, trainings, awareness raising activities are not inclusive, then 10-12% of the affected population might neither be prepared for a disaster, nor receive emergency services after a disaster happens.The disaster response and rescue operations require lots of money (6-7 Euros saved in response for one Euro invested in prevention, according to DG ECHO). The use of new technologies increases the quality of disaster risk prevention. In the new era of Information Technology (IT) the development of Augmentative reality (AR) technology plays an important role when it comes to training responding to disasters and when addressing the disaster risk management, specifically in disaster risk awareness raising. In digital area, OER, gamification content is the key for gain knowledge for disaster risk management for pupils (including those with disabilities).It is also recognized that disasters in the aftermath have a huge emotional impact. Risk awareness can be more effective, if it is not seen only as a technical/ practical event but more as a potential and very strong emotional life-event. In today’s world easy accessible and popular short film making is used a tool to address this emotional part of disaster awareness raising.The project contributes to the implementation of United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (Sendai Framework) and of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development addressing international incentives at the international level.The general objective for this project will be:Empowerment of an inclusive access and non-discriminatory participation of children, youth and persons with disability in disaster risk prevention and incorporation of disaster risk knowledge in formal and non-formal education through creating novel approach in training of children, youth and persons with disability, using OER and gamification. Improvement of cross-sectors disaster risk reduction for children, youth and persons with disabilities with an all-inclusive approach by relevant institutions, making connections between HEI, schools, local authorities.