Estepona, the only Spanish city council integrated in a European project that designs strategies against natural hazards or cyber-attacks.

The initiative involves 26 organizations across the EU to create a common response system. The city has an extensive track record in the planning, development and implementation of strategic projects in key areas such as sustainability, climate resilience, smart tourism and spatial planning.

Estepona participates, as the only Spanish municipality, in a European research program that pursues the design of response strategies against natural hazards or cyber-attacks. This is the ECHO initiative (acronym for ‘Empowering and connecting diverse communities for resilience to multiple threats through open data, open models and open source software’), in which 26 organizations distributed throughout the EU are involved to create a common response system.

Project ECHO’s work consists of “addressing not only individual risks, such as natural hazards, cyber-attacks or infrastructure failures, but also the cascading effects that arise when multiple chronic, slow-evolving risks, such as climate change, and more acute, high-impact events, such as cyber-attacks, converge, intensify or trigger each other.” In this way, the different participating entities carry out a work of compilation, integration, promotion, and especially, of sharing knowledge, proposals and ways of response.

The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, underlines the fit of this type of initiatives in the model of sustainable and innovative city that Estepona has been developing in recent years, and recalls that the municipality is part of various national and European networks, such as the Spanish Network of Cities for Climate, the Network of Sustainable Cities of Andalusia, or the Network of Smart Tourist Destination, which reinforce its commitment to sustainability and smart development.

Estepona City Council participates as a partner, which implies the availability of a grant received for the study and development of measures, as well as active participation in decision-making. In Spain, in addition to the Estepona City Council, other partners in this project include the Malaga Provincial Council, the Andalusian Health Service, the Andalusian Public Foundation for Malaga Research in Biomedicine and Health, CETAQUA, Hidralia, and the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

One of the first actions within this initiative has addressed the specific local and regional challenges related to resilience to floods and droughts in the Province of Malaga. It has been a meeting of the participating entities in which existing practices and opportunities for improvement have been discussed, reflections that will serve as a starting point for the development of innovative tools and a joint strategy.

Early warning systems

Estepona City Council has an extensive track record in the planning, development and implementation of strategic projects in key areas such as sustainability, climate resilience, smart tourism and spatial planning. Among its most outstanding experiences is its participation in the European GOBEYOND project, an innovation action aimed at developing and testing multi-hazard early warning system platforms for geological hazards and extreme weather events.

In this initiative, the Consistory of Estepona is one of the Andalusian partners, along with the Environment and Water Agency of Andalusia and Civil Protection. Within the framework of the same, an application has already been developed, which is currently in the experimental phase, which will improve the municipality’s ability to respond quickly to risks such as floods or fires. It integrates advanced technology for decision making by Civil Protection and emergency services.

In this project, which also has the participation of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Estepona is not only the beneficiary of a financial grant. As in the ECHO project, the city is also an active participant in the creation of initiatives that guarantee a safer and more resilient future in the face of natural hazards.

The City Council is participating in this study, on which work continues, together with other cities such as Attica (Greece), Campania (Italy), Canton (Switzerland) and the province of Al Hoceima (Morocco), thus contributing to the strengthening of civil protection and rapid response capacities in the Mediterranean and Europe.