Mission accomplished for the EU-funded flagship project taking the first step towards future procurement of interoperable next generation of broadband radio communication systems for public safety and security!

That was the main message of the BroadMap Final Stakeholders’ Workshop which took place on 6 April 2017, gathering more than 100 participants from 18 countries representing practitioners and all interested stakeholders of the Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) community: public authorities, industry, research, regulators as well as the finance sector!

This final Workshop was the opportunity for the attendees to learn more about the project activities and outcomes, now that the BroadMap project is coming to an end after a year of hard work. The BroadMap team presented in detail the methodology adopted throughout the lifetime of the project, to collect and validate practitioners’ needs and requirements, to translate them into technical specifications, to elaborate candidate solutions and organization schemes, and finally to produce transition roadmaps towards interoperable broadband radio communication systems. 

The European Commission Project Officer responsible for the project, Mr Christoph Castex (DG HOME), stressed the European motivation for EU Interoperable broadband for PPDR, and explained that the BroadMap project had successfully delivered the basis for the technical requirements for the Pre-Commercial Procurement call launched by the European Commission under the Horizon2020 programme beginning of March 2017. A dedicated session was organised to go more into details and inform the stakeholders about what will be the next step in this journey towards the desired Pan-European communication network for public safety and security, and in particular the legal and technical procedures related to Pre-Commercial Procurement and Public Procurement of Innovation Solutions. 

The participants were invited to give their opinion during several exchanges of views which took place during the course of the workshop. They welcomed the work accomplished by the project and in particular the positive outcome of having now developed a comprehensive database of practitioners needs and requirements, based on the largest consultation of PPDR organisations ever carried out at EU level. 

In its closing address, David Lund, BroadMap Coordinator, thanked all participants for their inputs which will fuel the reflection on the next step, i.e. the preparation of the submission of a proposal to bid in the future competition in the framework of the SEC-04-DRS-2017 call on Broadband communication systems.

You can find all the presentations made during the Final Stakeholders’ Workshop here.

The BroadMap team would like to thank again all the participants to the Workshop, and strongly commit to continue working towards the achievement of an interoperable broadband radio communication systems for public safety and security!

The BroadMap consortium.