112 Awards Ceremony
10 February 2009
MEDIA ADVISORY
Press contact: Gary MACHADO, + 32 498 375 962 or gm@eena.org
Venue: Palais d'Egmont, Brussels More information here - Google Map
Date & Time: 10 February 2009 - from 7.30pm to 10.30pm
7.30 pm  8.15 pm
Cocktail & Welcome Speech
8.15 pm  10.30 pm
Dinner & 112 Awards Ceremony
Description: The 3rd 112 Awards Ceremony will be held the evening of 10 February 2009 in Brussels – on the eve
of the European 112 Day (11/2/2009).
The 112 Awards Ceremony will be organised by EENA - European Emergency Number Association - under the
patronage of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Belgium and the Czech Presidency of the European
Union.
The aim of the 112 Awards Ceremony is to acknowledge and thank individuals and organizations that have helped
create a better 112. This will be a very high-level event with the participation of European Commissioners,
European Commission Staff, Members of the European Parliament, representatives from the Presidency of the
European Union, industry organisations and emergency services. The event will be held in Palais d’Egmont, a very
prestigious venue in the centre of Brussels (see here).
Please view here a full description of the event along with the list of prestigious political personalities who have
already confirmed their participation.
To attend: If you wish to attend the event, please send an email with your full contact details to Gary Machado at
gm@eena.org before Friday 30 May. Please also note that there is a restricted number of seats available at the
tables.
View the list of Awards and Awardees on page 2
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EMBARGOED UNTIL 10 February
This list of awardees should not be revealed before 10 February and the
official presentation of the Awardees to the media at the event
EENA Advisory Board & the 112 ESSN Members are delighted to announce the selected Awardees:
Outstanding Vision for 112 - Hannes Tschofenig, IETF-ECRIT
Contact: Hannes Tschofenig, hannes.tschofenig@nsn.com & +358504871445
Outstanding Contribution to Public Warning - Ministry of Interior, The Netherlands
Contact: Willy Steenbakkers, Willy.Steenbakkers@minbzk.nl & +31704265630
Outstanding in-vehicle emergency call initiative (eCall) - ADAC, Germany
Contact: Katrin Muellenbach-Schlimme, Katrin.muellenbach-schlimme@adac.de
Outstanding Accessible 112 Initiative - Administration for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief, Slovenia
Contact: Katja Banovec Juros, Katja.Banovec.Juros@urszr.si & +38614711855
Outstanding Emergency Service Initiative - 112 Murcia, Spain
Contact: Luis Gestoso de Miguel, luis.gestoso@carm.es & +34618680341
Outstanding Education on 112 - Special Telecommunications Service, Romania
Contact: Adrian Fulea, adrian.fulea@stsnet.ro & +40740778807
Outstanding Citizens’ Initiative - Ute and Siegfried Steiger, Germany
Contact: Franca Buzza, F.Buzza@steiger-service.de & +49-172-7310121
Outstanding Political Initiative – Ms. Vergnaud & M. Busoi, Members of the European Parliament
Contact: Office of Bernadette Vergnaud, bernadette.vergnaud@europarl.europa.eu & +3222845210
Office of Cristian-Silviu Busoi, cristiansilviu.busoi@europarl.europa.eu & +3222845732
Outstanding National initiative on 112 - Fire and Rescue Service, Czech Republic
Contact: Jan Urbanek, Jan.Urbanek@grh.izscr.cz & +420724979459
Outstanding First Responder & First Aid - M. Andersen & M. Knudsen, Falck & Joan M. Hansen, Denmark
Contact: Marc Alex Ib Uhrenholt, maiu@falck.dk & +4529206554
Outstanding 112 Call Centre - 112 Madrid, Spain
Contact: Alejandro Martínez Garcia, amartinez@madrid112.es & +34917089132
Read the Awardees stories below on page 3 to 8
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Outstanding Vision for 112
Coordination of Standardization Work on Emergency Services, IETF-ECRIT
In November 2004 Jon Peterson and Hannes Tschofenig organized a Birds of a Feather meeting to convince
participants of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to work on specifications for emergency calling over the
Internet. A few months later the IETF ECRIT working group (see http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ecritcharter.html) was created and the technical work began with Marc Linsner and Hannes as the working group
chairs. Very soon afterwards it became clear that there are many organizations trying to define their own
architecture and protocols for the same purpose. Facing the danger of contradicting and duplicated work the idea
for the emergency services coordination workshops (see http://www.emergency-services-coordination.info) was
born with Hannes as one of the members of the Program Committee. Workshop planning has always been
challenging with the attempt to gather not only standardization organizations but also other stakeholders
together. Since the feedback from the participants was always very positive we recently held the 5 th workshop (in
Vienna). These workshops (and other coordination activities with larger organizations, such as IEEE, 3GPP and
TISPAN) have helped the standardization community to get a better understanding of the needs of various
stakeholders and to develop more robust specifications. This is, however, not the time to stop coordinating as
standardization and deployment activities are still ongoing.
Outstanding Contribution to Public Warning
EU project: Cell Broadcast for Public Warning
The ‘Cell Broadcast for Public Warning – sharing knowledge and experiences and identification and standardisation
of (technical) requirements’ project will be carried out from 1 September 2008 until 31 December 2009. Cell
Broadcast is a technology used for communicating with the general public in high-risk and crisis situations. After a
successful tender the system will be implemented in the Netherlands in the period 2009 and going live in the
beginning of 2010. An important part of the project concerns the sharing of Cell Broadcast knowledge with other
(EU) countries to gain more in-depth knowledge on the subject. An other objective is to provide direction for the
mobile (standardization) industry and the European Commission in order to offer our citizens a seamless Cell
Broadcast service for warning and informing the public in times of crisis at both national and international level.
As a subproject within this project, events will be organized together with 6 EU countries. These 6 countries
(Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom and Sweden) are the countries which jointly
submitted the Call for Proposals of the European Commission in May 2008 (Prevention, Preparedness and
Consequence Management of Terrorism and Other Security Related Risks programme) and are referred to as the
‘partner countries’. The countries which participate in the events, but do not belong to this group of 6 organizing
countries are referred to as ‘participating countries’ (for instance, Belgium, France, Finland,
Norway, Estonia and Austria).
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Outstanding in-vehicle emergency calling initiative (eCall)
German automobile club ADAC, Germany
As eCall is known to improve road safety and enhance the rescue services in the Member States, ADAC signed the
Memorandum of Understanding of the eCall Initiative as early as 2004 to express its willingness to actively
support the deployment of eCall across Europe. Since then, in coordination with ARC Europe, the leading
European network of automobile clubs, ADAC has been undertaking various measures to support and promote the
implementation of eCall. With its competence as an established consumer protection organization and its
experience with GPS-based services for road users, ADAC has made substantial contributions to expert
discussions and papers both at high and at project level. In spring 2007, ADAC and the FIA automobile clubs
published articles in their club magazines to raise the road users’ awareness of eCall and its potential benefits.
Also in 2007, ADAC in cooperation with its ARC Europe partner clubs ÖAMTC, Austria, and ACI Global, Italy, as
well as with the industrial partners, Airbiquity, Continental, Opel and T-Mobile, conducted a cross-border eCall
Feasibility Trial to look into the feasibility of the pan-European in-vehicle eCall service as recommended by the
eCall Driving Group and adopted by the European Parliament. This eCall Feasibility Trial has proven, that a panEuropean in-vehicle eCall service is viable. The trial has been recognized and appreciated both at national and
European level.
Outstanding Accessible 112 Initiative
(112 calls made by people with disability)
Slovene 112-center introduces solution for people with hearing and other disabilities, Slovenia
The »WAP 112 call« is a solution which was introduced in the 112 Centre Ljubljana, the capital of the Republic of
Slovenia. Through this centre all WAP 112 calls from the territory of Slovenia are received. This solution is mainly
meant to enable 112 calls to people with hearing disabilities. The application is available on the 112 wap page
wap.sos112.si in Slovene as well as in English language.
From the 1st February 2009 the application will be upgraded with an automatic localization of the caller from
Slovene main GSM operator – Mobitel. Later, also the other GSM providers will follow.
A short description of the functionality:
Step 1: the caller enters his/her GSM number, name and address
Step 2: the caller has to choose between the following services from the menu: medical help, firemen, police or
other help
Step 3: the system asks the caller to confirm his/her choice, like for example: »You’ve chosen firemen
assistance«. If confirmed, the system leads you to Step 4, if not, returns back to Step 2.
Step 4: after confirming all previously entered data: GSM number, name, address and the type of assistance
needed the system shows all the data on one screen and asks for the final confirmation with the following warning
»I confirm the correctness of the data and want to trigger the SOS 112 call”.
Step 5: the 112 operator accepts the request for assistance
The »WAP 112 call« is a solution which is constantly upgraded with new versions and represents the first step
towards multimedia support of 112 calls for people with disabilities in Slovenia. Video calls and other
functionalities are planned in the future. The upgrading of the user interface is done in the context of regular
“brainstorming” with the representations of institutions that are in charge of people with different kind of
disabilities.
Outstanding Emergency Service Initiative
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112 Video Calls in Murcia, Spain
112 Region of Murcia was developed thanks to the efforts of the Government of M. Ramon Luis Valcarcel, his
President, who invested big amounts of every year budgets to have this outstanding emergency service. After an
accident in Murcia, Spain, where the victim did not survived because of the lack of information provided by the
called to the 112 centre in Murcia Francisco Rojo (Director of New technologies of the emergencies center of
Murcia) and the new technologies team of the112 of Murcia invented a pioneer system, where today the 112
centre in Murcia can identify the cell phone that is calling, and if it’s a 3G cell phone and under 3G reception, they
can remotely make a take over of the phone and activate the cell phones speaker, microphone and Video-camera.
Thanks to this idea, the 112 emergency centre in Murcia can get images and video LIVE from the emergency area,
and since an image speaks more than thousand words – they can prevent future victims due to the lack of
information provided to the emergency centre.
Outstanding education on 112
National campaign for informing-educating the pupils on using 112 emergency number, Romania
The objective of the educational actions carried out among pupils is to inform children and young people about the
correct use of 112, only in case of emergencies.
The Special Telecommunications Service (STS) representatives met the leaders of the county school
inspectorates, the schools and high schools directors, persons responsible for the projects in education, whose
support was asked for, as part of the efforts to limit the false calls to 112 collaboration protocols were concluded
therewith.
To aid the teaching staff, the presentation of 112 System, system function, the way a case is processed, examples
emergencies, how to be prepared for an emergency situation, power point presentations, quizzes for interactive
contests for pupils, participating diplomas for teachers and pupils, educational and informational flyers, statistics
regarding 112 calls, press releases) were posted on school inspectorates’ websites and on www.112.ro website.
STS produced audio and video spots and commercials containing educational-informational messages, projected
on plasma screens in public places and within police stations or transmitted to local and central radio and
television stations.
Altogether with the Center for Health Policies and Services, we succeeded in printing flyers, posters and other
informative materials distributed in hospitals, railway and underground stations, schools etc.
Press releases about the events of this campaign were also transmitted to the mass-media: newspapers, local and
central radio and television stations, press agencies.
STS received the award for “The best communication campaign” in a national contest with all the mobile telecom
operators.
On the 11/2 2008, the first European 112 Day, the National Unique System for Emergency Calls organized
countrywide actions where pupils have been given explanations about the 112 System, while visiting 112 PSAP
centers, as well as recommendations for the correct use of 112 emergency
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Outstanding Citizens’ Initiative
Ute and Siegfried Steiger
The non-profit organisation Björn Steiger Stiftung was founded after the death of the eight-year-old Björn Steiger
on Mai 3rd, 1969. The boy got struck by a car and had to wait over an hour until the ambulance arrived. He died
on the way to the hospital as a result of a shock. With the goal to improve emergency services in order to save
lives his parents, Ute and Siegfried Steiger, founded the foundation. To fulfil its mission the Björn Steiger Stiftung
has for 40 years initiated, financed and supported different emergency programmes with an outstanding outcome.
One of the first milestones set by the Björn Steiger Stiftung was the introduction of the common SOS-numbers
112/110 in Germany in the beginning of the 1970´s, which now is the common SOS-number in the EU (112).
Radio communication, emergency road telephones, baby ambulances as well as the German Air Rescue, which is
the biggest air rescue organisation in Europe, are other programmes initiated by the Björn Steiger Foundation. In
2006 another milestone was set by the decision to launch the LifeService platform in all German PSAPs, which
enables caller location from mobile phones in case of emergency. In 2007 the same system was identified as a
suitable eCall carrier and since then the organization has played an important role in the establishment of eCall in
Europe.
There is an ongoing process to improve the LifeService platform and integrate additional services, which will
improve the daily work in a PSAP. One example of such an improvement is the emergency records, which were
integrated in the platform in 2008. The Björn Steiger Stiftung is also engaged in the work to reduce sudden
cardiac death through actively promote AEDs and train citizen in first aid. Such a training program will in 2009 be
addressed to German pupils in the 7th grade. Summing-up, the initiative of Ute and Siegfried Steiger to found
the Björn Steiger Stiftung is one example of how a tragic family fate can be turned into a positive driver - and
change the life of many people thanks to improved emergency services.
Outstanding Political Initiative
MEPs Bernadette Vergnaud and Cristian Busoi
MEPs Vergnaud and Busoi will be awarded for their contributions to emergency communications during the
revision of the Universal Service Directive. As a result, the revision of the European Parliament proposes the
following:

Member States should condone more efforts for informing and educating the public on the use of 112

The 112 should be made accessible from the entire EU territory

Member States will have to ensure the implementation of caller-location

Access to emergency services through the 112 may be blocked in case of repeated misuse by the user

The 112 should be more accessible to people with disabilities
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Outstanding National Initiative on 112
112 in Czech Republic
Fire and Rescue Service of the Czech Republic is ordained to operate PSAPs for 112. Introduction of those centers
led to eminent asset in modernizing of emergency call dispatching process in the Czech Republic. PSAP centers in
the Czech Republic are built on the complex technology system to receive calls to single European emergency call
number 112 and 150, which is unified and globally engaged on all centers in the Czech Republic. The technology
integrates current progressive functionalities, including fixed telephone terminal identification (number and
address), phone operator identification, cellular phone localization, IMEI identification, unified GIS
implementation, mutual technology backup, self-sustaining IP phone connection and language support. The
solution also introduces data communication with operational centers of fundamental branches of Integrated
Rescue System in the Czech Republic (Fire and Rescue Service, Police, Ambulance), whereas PSAP call centers
notify those operational centers about emergency situation by sending structured data document, which is onward
processed by application software of these centers. As a pilot this technology was prepared to process incoming
eCall events by the update module to present system. Cross interconnection between all centers ensures, that any
call is delivered to dispensable call taker in no time, regardless to the locality, to guarantee that the citizen will
always get beneficent assistance (call set-up time 0.75 sec, call response 3.5 sec). Localization of mobile users
uses push method, thus the information is usable at the beginning of the call. The development of the system is
still in progress to achieve top efficiency.
Outstanding First Responder & First Aid
School girl saves best friend from gas explosion
In June last year, Joan Hansen and her friend Laura went camping with the rest of the children from grade 7th.
While cooking, a heavy gas explosion appears from one of their jets, which causes it to go on fire. The flames hit
Laura's jacket and her face, as well as her chest and legs, get seriously burnt.
Joan, who’s standing next to Laura, reacts very quickly. She gets Laura to lie down and rolls her over,
in an attempt to put the fire out. A teacher rushes to the scene and calls 112 for help. The 112 contacts Falck and
asks for an ambulance.
While Joan and the teacher await the ambulance, they keep Laura cold under the shower.
Because of tide the rescuers are not sure that they would make it to the main land. Instead they take
the girl to a nearby playing field, with enough room for a helicopter to land. As the helicopter arrives it
is decided that Laura due to her injuries needs to be taken to the University Hospital of Copenhagen
300 km away, where a team of specialists awaits her.
Joan has been there for Laura all the way through her rehabilitation process. The doctors say that the main
reason why Laura is able to make a full recovery without any permanent injuries, is because Joan reacted so
quickly. This statement was also confirmed by the rescuers from the ambulance.
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Outstanding 112 Call Center
112 Madrid, Spain
112 has more than 10 years experience as single Emergency Number in Madrid and Madrid 112 Centre handles
90% of the emergency calls received in the region. A great effort to make population aware of 112 as the only
Emergencies Number has been made during the last years in Madrid and Spain and Madrid 112 Centre also
collaborates receiving, teaching and training children about the significance of 112 centres.
Madrid 112 stands out for gathering in one centre all the stakeholders involved in the emergency services, with a
great effort to integrate in one platform their communications systems, including Civil Protection, Emergency
Health Care Mobile Services SUMMA and SAMUR, Madrid City Council Fire Brigade, Regional Fire Brigade, Forestal
Brigade, Madrid Municipal Police, local Police from other towns in Madrid Region, Spanish Civil Guard, Spanish
National Police, Red Cross, and more.
Professionalism and efficiency in Madrid 112 Emergency Services have overcome important tests, like the 2004
March 11th terrorist attacks, the Windsor Building fire and the Barajas airplane crash last August.
As time goes by, Madrid 112 Centre has become a World reference to evaluate every kind of situation related to
Emergency Services. A sign of this international leadership are the almost 200 visits received at its headquarters,
which confirm its constant eagerness to innovate and its determination to improve the emergencies management.
Some of the most important initiatives in this sense are the location of mobile calls, the accessibility for people
with disabilities (like deaf people), the tool for massive warning broadcast or having call-takers speaking more
languages than Spanish.
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