Lessons Learned from Civil Protection Graduation in

Gamboa and Monteiro

Lessons Learned from Civil Protection Graduation in Portugal


Roberto Gamboa Institute Polytechnic of Leiria, GIRM, ESTM, Portugal, [email protected]

Silvia Monteiro Institute Polytechnic of Leiria, ESTG, Portugal, [email protected]

ABSTRACT

This article describes the main lessons learned from the implementation of the civil protection higher education degree in Portugal. Starts with a reference to the new challenges and working tools that civil protection has to deal with in this XXI century, continues with some of the work that was done by the Institute Polytechnic of Leiria civil protection team since 2002 and finally summarizes the main lessons learned: civil protection has to be considered as a multidisciplinary area; it is very important to have professional experts as teachers; to have a national and international network; to develop and publish research work and to prepare the students to the labor market. With this article, the civil protection team of the Leiria Polytechnic Institute expects to contribute for the development of a culture of security, safety, prevention and planning in Portugal and in the world.

Keywords

Civil Protection, higher education, Portugal, Institute Polytechnic of Leiria

INTRODUCTION

Civil Protection academic domain gained increasing importance with the development of the modern society. The widened concept of quality of life involves not only the health and social integration but also the knowledge of the risks and the development of systems able to mitigate the consequences of eventual disasters. At the same time the risk prevention and the proper emergency planning are considered as the intelligent and economic way to face the risk and to increase security and safety. The increasing importance attributed to the civil protection can be related with the increment of potential risk situations, in the natural and technological scope but also in the social and human perspective. The influence of the global communication and the fast spreading of disaster images also contribute to the increasing importance that is given to this area. Historically, Portugal is considered to have developed the first coordinated emergence response to a disaster, in the 1755 earthquake, Dynes [1] even considers that “the earthquake on November 1, 1755 can be considered the first “modern” disaster because it was first to evoke a coordinated state emergency response as well as a forward looking comprehensive effort for reconstruction which included mitigation efforts to reduce fu ture disaster efforts“. The government coordination of the emergence is also reported in some of the books that were published following the earthquake, like Mendoça [2] that states “His Majesty, assisted by the Sebastião de Melo, took the necessary measures to help, relieve and safeguard the people”. From historical perspective it is possible to conclude that Portugal has some tradition in civil protection, but during many years there was no University lever degree for the civil protection professionals. Generally the top level civil protection professionals would have some university level degree related to engineering or management or some military curricula, but there were no bachelor level degree related to civil protection. The need for a university level graduation in this domain can be underlined by the increase of the scientific content associate to the technological accidents, by the increasing complexity of working and decision support tools that can be used and by the conscience of high costs asso ciated to great disasters. The creation of the Civil

European Journal of Security and Safety

12

Gamboa and Monteiro


Protection municipal structures and the direct attribution of this responsibility to the city mayor also increased the necessity of graduates in order to enhance the quality of the municipality level Civ il Protection teams. Superior education in Portugal has developed an interest for the area of the Civil Protection in the beginning of the XXI century. The first graduation in civil protection was proposed by the Institute Polytechnic of Leiria at 2002, and approved to start in 2004[3].

CIVIL PROTECTION GRADUATION IN THE POLITECHNIC INSTITUTE OF LEIRIA

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, IPL, is a state-run institution of higher polytechnic education. It was created by Decree-Law in 1980, has five schools, almost 10 000 students in technological specialization courses, undergraduate courses, postgraduate courses and masters covering practically all areas of knowledge. The Leiria district is considered to be one of the most attractive districts in Portugal for its population settlement, for the industrial and economic entrepreneurial structure. All of this geographic area is known for its commercial activity with an international dimension, namely in the crystal and glass, molds, plastics and ceramics; for its agricultural activities, particularly fruits and vegetables and fishing activities. “A prestigious institution in a successful region” is one of the phrases that the IPL uses to promote the courses/degrees it offers, with full awareness that the successful image and prestige attained is due to the region where it is located. The Polytechnic Institute of Leiria had his first Portuguese graduates in Civil Protection in 2007, as a first cycle in the Bologna structure. By that time 25 teachers were related to t he degree and almost 100 students were enrolled between the first and the third year. Some of the students, around 30%, were already working in the area of the Civil Protection and the degree was an opportunity to increase their competencies and skills. Nowadays the civil protection degree in the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria has around 120 students and this last year 24 students had their graduation. 37 teachers are involved in the civil protection degree, 35% with PhD and 26% with Master Degree. The Institute Polytechnic of Leiria also offers the Emergency Logistics Technological Specialization Course that aims at the training of professionals in logistics and emergency planning domains. During this course the following areas are addressed: logistics of hospitalization and evacuation, transport, maintenance and replenishment, this course gives also access to Civil Protection degree. The existence of these courses contributes by itself to the increasing of knowledge in this area providing more motivation to the specialists who teach in these graduations to search and systemize the information they share with their students. Students work in the different curricular units generally address local or regional civil protection issues contributing for the knowledge growth and local application in this domain.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM CIVIL PROTECTION GRADUATION IN THE POLITECHNIC INSTITUTE OF LEIRIA

Ten years after the first proposal of the Civil Protection Graduation at Higher Education Level the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria course coordinators can enumerate some lessons learned in this domain.

CIVIL PROTECTION AS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY AREA

Figure 1- Graphic showing the main areas considered in the civil protection curricular plan.


13

Gamboa and Monteiro


Back in 2002 when the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria civil protection study team started to build the curricular plan, several professionals active in this domain gave their advice about the proposed degree. The first main conclusion of that enquiry was that the civil protection is a multidisciplinary domain, with important knowledge from engineering, but also from the management and social sciences area. Figure 1 shows the main areas that were considered in the curriculum design.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERTS AS TEACHERS

Being a rather new academic domain, the civil protection area depends on the field experts to share their knowledge in order to make a bridge between the basic and more theoretical areas of the sciences and the real word problems and applications. The coordination of the civil protection degree considers very important to have civil protection specialists as teachers in the last years of the degree because that is the best way to prepare the graduates to the labor market, and to ensure that they are able to fully understand th e field specific problems and language. In the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria approximately 31% of the curricular unites are lectured by specialists in the field that continue to develop their work outside the academia and inside the civil protection professional domain. The specialists also help in the construction of the local, regional and national network around the civil protection degree, due to their personal and professional contacts. Those contacts are frequently used to provide study visits with the students to disaster coordination centers, fireman headquarters and also to scientific laboratories that where some disaster characteristics are studied.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL NETWORK

The development of a national and international contact network through the mobility of teachers and students, seminaries and conferences is also an important lesson to consider because it provides the exchange of experiences and contributes to a better and deeper knowledge of this academic domain. In the development of the civil protection degree the interaction with the professional associations was stimulated, for example with the National Association of Professional Firemen or with the Portuguese Firemen Liege, but also with the National Authority for Civil Protection, National Association of Portuguese Municipalities and even with the government ministry and secretaries. The student’s participation in great European and National exercises like ALS2006, EULUX 2007 and PROCIV IV 2008, to mention only the first ones, were also very important to enter the mentioned networks . Contacts with European universities had also been made, through the mobility of students and teachers with European universities like Zilina University or Nitra University in Slovakia, Messina University in Italy or the Leeds University in the United Kingdom. There were also contacts with American universities and even teachers mobility, in particular with the presence of an investigator of the University of Chicago in the first semester of 2008-2009 through a Fulbright fellowship. Those contacts are also very important because they can enlarge the knowledge base and can also promote the participation in international projects like the eSEC project [4] that also expands the international network and motivates the research in this field.

RESEARCH WORK

Being a new academic field in Portugal, civil protection teachers and students are not used to publish their work, there are frequent meetings with scientific relevance but generally the speakers don’t write a scientific article about their research. Teachers form the classic academic fields, like chemistry or physics are trying to encourage the publication of scientific articles, like the one about the forest fires in Portugal [5] but this culture is difficult to develop. Nevertheless the students are encouraged to develop small scientific projects during several curricular units and in the final year during, the Project in Civil Protection, they develop a project under teacher’s orientation and sometimes related to some local or regional question. Those research projects play also an important role in the preparation of the students to the labor market because generally the students have to contact or to experience the problems that their project is addressing and they spend some time dealing with real world problems.


14

Gamboa and Monteiro


LABOR MARKET

Maybe the hardest lesson that can be mentioned from the civil protection graduation in Portugal is the difficulty that students new to the area have to really enter in the labor market. In fact the integration of the civil protection graduates in civil protection teams are being difficult. That could be anticipated by the fact that the graduation is new and not very well known to the field professionals and that the country en tered in crisis situation. Nevertheless, some of our graduates had already some activity in the civil protection domain and for them the graduation was an opportunity to develop competencies and to climb on the structure. Many of the graduates that were not already related to civil protection benefited from extracurricular training periods with the civil protection teams and professionals, contributing to their adaptation to the labor market. At the end of the first decade of this new century we can say that several young professionals are slowly starting to integrate the municipal and national teams in the civil protection planning departments and in the professional civil protection system. They also contribute to successful teams in training and information to security and safety. It is a slow process but it is the only way that the young professionals have to learn with the old ones in the real live problems. With this knowledge increase the quality of the Civil Protection team will also increase contributing to the development of a culture of security, safety, prevention and planning in Portugal and in the world.

CONCLUSION

The development of the civil protection graduation in the Institute Polytechnic of Leiria is a process of learning and teaching in this new academic field, the learned lessons here mentioned were considered the most important for the course coordinators: Consideration of the civil protection as a multidisciplinary field with input from engineering, informatics, management, and other social sciences; Being a new academic area it is important to have professional experts as teachers, to provide a good link with the real world; National and International networks are also very important because they provide the exchange of experiences and contribute to a better and deeper knowledge; It is also very important to develop the research work and to publish it internationally; Finally it is crucial to prepare the students to the labor market because they are the main reason for the existence of the graduation. The above mentioned lessons are the reflections of the first ten years of experience, for the future, the civil protection team of the Leiria Polytechnic Institute will continue to contribute for the development of a real culture of security, safety, prevention and planning in Portugal and in the world.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper was prepared with the support of the European Union, project Competency Based e-portal of Security and Safety Engineering – eSEC – number: 502092-LLP-1-2009-1-SK-ERASMUS-EMHE, funded by the European Commission with support from the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) and reflects only the views of the authors.

REFERENCES

1.

Dynes, Russel R., 2003, The Lisbon Earthquake In 1755: The First Modern Disaster, University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center, Newark – USA, pp. 2.

2.

Mendonça, J.J. Moreira, 1758, História Universal dos Terramotos …, Oficina de António Vicente da Silva, Lisboa – Portugal, pp. 142.

3.

Gamboa, R., Monteiro S., Almeida L., 2010, Higher education in Portugal and civil protection sup erior graduation, Best Practices Conference Proceedings – ISBN 978-80-7318-926-6, Tomas Bata University, Zlin - Check Republic, pp. 65-70.

4.

Ristvej J., Kampová K., Loveček T., (2012) eSEC Portal as a Tool for Improvement of Security Focused Studies, In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management ISCRAM2012 (Eds. L. Rothkrantz, J. Ristvej and Z. Franco, 2012), ISBN 978-0-86491332-6. ID 258 pp. 1 – 6.

5.

Monteiro S., Moura J., Oliveira A., Gonçalves P., Mendes S., Gamboa, R., 2011, Intentional Forest Fires in Portugal 2007-2009, a time related study, Policing in central and eastern Europe – social control of unconventional deviance, conference proceedings; Ljubliana-Slovenia, ISBN 978-961-6821-10-0. pp. 149 155.


15