CREWS Project Launched to Strengthen Disaster Resilience in the Baltic Sea Region
The new CREWS project will strengthen disaster resilience in the Baltic Sea Region by enhancing cooperation between authorities and civil society in crisis management.
The CREWS project partners at the kick-off meeting in Hamburg-Altona on 27–28 March 2025.
© CREWS 2025.
The CREWS project, which aims to strengthen disaster risk reduction through community engagement and cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region, has officially launched with a kick-off meeting in Hamburg-Altona on 27–28 March 2025.
CREWS – or Enhancing Capacities in Disaster Risk Reduction by Facilitating Public-Civil Cooperation – seeks to empower local communities by bridging the gap between formal authorities and civil society actors in disaster management.
“Preparedness is a shared responsibility,” says Vineta Polatside, Senior Adviser at the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), who is overseeing the project on its behalf. “With CREWS, we’re building bridges between authorities and communities to ensure no one stands alone in a crisis.”
Promoting a whole-of-society approach to crisis management, CREWS will develop a collaborative model and a digital tool to support effective coordination between formal and informal actors, such as volunteers. These tools will be adaptable to diverse regional needs and a range of disaster scenarios, including extreme weather events and military crises.
Within the project, the CBSS contributes to the development of the cooperation model, organises validation workshops, supports the model’s publication, provides input for the digital tool, co-designs a training programme for voluntary organisations and authorities, and manages communication and dissemination activities.
Led by the Altona District Office of the City of Hamburg and funded by the EU’s Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme, CREWS will run from March 2025 to February 2028. It also notably supports the Policy Area Secure (PA Secure) of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR), by building capacities for preparedness and response and promoting a shared societal security culture across the region.
Project partners
- Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, District Office of Altona (Lead Partner)
- City of Warsaw
- Council of the Baltic Sea States Secretariat
- Danish Civil Protection League
- Estonian Rescue Board
- Fire and Rescue Department under the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Lithuania
- Hamburg Fire and Rescue Service (HFRS)
- Jelgava Municipality Institution “Jelgava Digital Centre”
- Klaipeda University
- Lithuanian Red Cross Society
- State Fire and Rescue Service of Latvia
- The Finnish National Rescue Association
- University of Eastern Finland
Official project website
https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/crews/
