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Project B-READI stands for Building Reliable Effective and Aware DIsaster emergency and prevention managing skills.

Communities and public and private companies need new and modern ways to design integrated emergency plans not only to manage the consequences of a disaster, but also and above all to design in peacetime, strategic and integrated planning, to ensure in the event of a crisis, that communities resume socio-economic and productive activities promptly. This requires the creation of a network of interconnected and interdisciplinary skills and competencies in advance of a disaster, to provide rapid responses and to better manage the complexities of the recovery process. The reliability and effectiveness of such an approach requires managerial governance capabilities. In recent years, due to the increase in crises, the profile of an Emergency Manager has been developed, and some types of certifications are offered nationally and internationally, but are not linked to a university curriculum. Often, holders of such certifications start working as police officers, detectives, firefighters, security technicians, police dispatchers, paramedics and others who have gained considerable experience in civil protection.

Extensive work experience is a prerequisite for an Emergency Manager, but today's complex economic, social and environmental scenario requires a strong mix of managerial knowledge and skills with critical thinking, decision-making, interpersonal and leadership that can only be developed within master's degrees related to law enforcement, public administration, business administration, engineering and medicine.

Moreover, since disasters can take many forms, national and local governments and organisations need to be prepared for any emergency that may occur, i.e. they need to be aware of all possible risks, be able to imagine the worst case scenario and have the capacity to draw up a strategic and integrated plan on how to deal with it. This means that additional competences and skills need to be developed to provide the existing EM profiles with enhanced and additional knowledge, skills and abilities.

In these tragic days when the Corona-virus started to spread around the world, and early action was crucial, two main points were evident:

• in each country, the government adopts its own policy without coordinating with others, and each national civil protection service uses different approaches, methods and tools preventing a common strategy, even when national borders are not an obstacle to the spread of the danger.
• For these reasons, many experts, starting with E.Di.Ma.S., have advocated the need to create the profile of a European professional for crisis management. Moreover, in this context it emerged that volunteers have proved to be an indispensable resource for assisting populations in many areas.

For these reasons many experts have claimed the need to create the profile of a European Professional for the crisis management. Furthermore, the volunteers have been proved to be the backbone of the substantial assistance to the population from any field.