COBACORE Project Meeting

8th May 2014

The COBACORE consortium met at the offices of the Netherlands Red Cross in The Hague between 14-16 April, 2014. As the project enters its first birthday, significant progress has been made within each of the research strands in the project. A number of public reports, which can be found here, demonstrate the direction of the COBACORE research to-date.

Continuing with innovation and creativity, COBACORE will soon host an intermediate evaluation event with a limited audience in Rotterdam in June. The group has devised a serious game (COBAGAME) to simulate a disaster and role-play the different communities involved in the recovery cycle: affected communities, professional responders and responding communities. During the meeting in The Hague, the consortium conducted a test run of the game, and investigated the bete platform development.

The meeting ended with an exciting workshop where the consortium was lucky to be joined by Mr. Trevor Riggen, Vice President of Disaster Operations at the American Red Cross. Trevor shared his experiences of recovery from disasters in America. Issues such as the role of social media, unbound volunteers and mechanisms for managing their contributions to recovery, and the power of mobilisation were just some of the items discussed.

Next steps for the COBACORE project include finalisation of the COBAGAME serious game for piloting the beta platform and (potentially) future training and educational purposes. The team is also exploring ongoing FP7 projects where collaboration would be mutually beneficial, and inter-organisational networking including those relating to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in a very informative and collaborative manner.