Upgrade and national enlargement of Emergency and Civil Protection

Management Service
Albania is highly vulnerable for disasters, this gets visible by happened earthquakes as the big one on
Nov 26th 2019, seasonal wild fires and currently once more the flooding situation. Even the intervention
to those incidents has been improved over the last years there is still no common view on incident
location, resources or agencies which shows for the decisionmakers and government on one service
the situation and provision of possible scenarios to ease the situation – incl. the progress on the
interventions.
Next to this the persons in distress reaching out for help must be better supported by provide a unified
reporting which contains the needed functions as requires by the EU within the European Electronic
Communication Code (EECC) as the unified number (for all of Albania), a service to find the location of
the caller (e.g. Advanced Mobile Location), the support of the e-call from vehicles and the use of SMS
for persons with disabilities. These requirements had been already implemented into local legislation
by AKEP in Sept 2019 but not placed into function.
When looking on recent installation of similar services within the region there should be given special
focus to our neighbouring country North Makedonia. With the support of the EU the national unified
Emergency Call and Incident Management System 1st Life from the Italian company Beta80 has been
procured in Dez. 2020 and is currently in the rollout phase.
The NMK system is operated by the National Crisis Management Center with all Agencies as Police,
Fire and Medical Service directly operating in the same system and assigning their units to the
intervention. There is also a direct communication with the regional NATO Partnership for Peace NICS
(Next Generation Incident Coordination System) which enables a bi-directional exchange in the Crisis
planning and situation picture. The Service must be seen as a single virtual Emergency Operation
Center (EOC) with working positions distributed in each region, but all regional locations will operate on
the same central instance of database and call-service. The regional structure will not be visible to
external organizations or the public. Independent at which of the regional centres a call arrives, the call
will internally be routed to the operator who is best suited to answer that call. An integrated EOC must
be capable of handling the continuous everyday business as well as mass casualty and catastrophe
incidents.
Similar System had been envisioned in Albania in 2015 by installing a national system using 112 under
the Ministry of internal affairs, which got stuck due to financial shortages within the area of the City of
Tirana.
Current situation in Albania
 The new agency for Civil protection (AKMC) is searching for an option to establish a new
national crisis operation room, the activation of 1-1-2 call service as a national function is in
discussion.
 The Fire Fighting and Rescue Directorate (MZSH) (128) is lacking on any incident reporting
and coordination functions.
 The Police has a functional national Case Management system but no unified call service for
126/129
 The Emergency Medical Service 127 is already running a national service using the Italian 1st
Life Software by Beta80 company
 The “Agenzia Italiana per la Cooperazione Allo Sviluppo (AICS) has provided funds up to
€30Mio. for the Technical Assistance both to the AKMC and MZSH incl. to increase their
operational capabilities.
Options to activate a national system in Albania:
 The system used by the emergency Medical service is produced by the same company which
now provides the national system in NMK, it is fully functional on a national level but on an older
version.
 The selection for the system in NMK was based on an international EU tender procedure,
therefore the 1st Life product can be seen as state of the art – best economic solution and it
should be proven if an upgrade of the current in Albania installed system and enlargement for
AKMC and MZSH using partly the funds from the AICS is possible. Considering the emergency
status of the current services and by referring to the less than 3 months old decision in NMK
with a direct procedure (if acceptable by AICS)
 The requirements for the Albanian system are ident with the delivery in NMK only the size must
be enlarged from 8 Regions to 12 Qarks. This approach enables Albania to be fully functional
on the national system by the start of the fire season and also provide full emergency Service
support on an EU level for the new touristic season.