30 major organisations support Europe’s eCall efforts

04 Jun 2008

The European Emergency Number Association (EENA) will form a new Advisory Board reinforcing the advocacy organisation's leading role as the "Voice of 112" in the European Union.

Although the EU created the 112 emergency number 7 years ago, 78% Europeans remain unaware according to the latest Eurobarometer survey.More than thirty major political, association and industry leaders have joined the EENA Advisory Board, which is a platform gathering the main stakeholders involved with the implementation and operation of 112:

Politicians

• Gérard Onesta, vice president of the European Parliament
• Dimitrios Papadimoulis, member of the European Parliament
• Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, member of the European Parliament
• Marc Tarabella, Minister of Formation, Wallonia region, Belgium
• Diana Wallis, vice president of the European Parliament

Professional users & associations

• e911 Institute
• Federation of the European Union Fire Officer Associations (FEU)
• International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM)
• National Emergency Number Association (NENA)
• Nordic International Network for Safety and Security (NINSS)
• United Nations Platform for the Promotion of Early Warning (UN-PPEW)
• World Association for Disaster & Emergency Medicine (WADEM)
• World Health Organisation (WHO) - European regional office

Solution providers

• Amper Homeland Security
• Andrew Corp
• ATX
• Cisco
• Microsoft Public Safety
• Omnitor
• Openwave
• PlantCML
• Positron Public Safety Systems
• TechnoCom Corp
• Siemens
• True Position

Observers

• The Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Association (CEASA)
• European Committee for Standardisation (CEN)
• European Union of the Deaf (EUD)
• Rvarium

Under the new committee EENA intends to promote the European emergency number 112 by launching a Europe-wide 112 Community Education project, create a network of 112 First Responders active in their countries via EENA 112 Chapters, contribute to official legislative documents related to 112, and improve recognition of and response to 112 calls through a 112 Excellence Centre project.
According to president & founder of EENA Olivier Paul-Morandini, the whole emergency communications and response service is facing great challenges: Caller-location is still not available to several emergency services, multilingual calls are not appropriately handled, and the number of false calls to 112 remains very high due to the lack of education campaigns.