In the medical, civil protection and security fields, just-in-time training is delivered to practitioners to allow for the rapid acquisition of specific skills or knowledge when the need arises. Drawing from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the demand for immediate training of medical staff and other first responders in different aspects of infectious disease management, the webinar will expand on the current and potential applications of this concept response organisations with best practices and methodologies from three speakers with different backgrounds.

Luca Ragazzoni, scientific coordinator at the Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine (CRIMEDIM) of the Università del Piemonte Orientale, will present a concrete example of just-in-time training at a tertiary referral hospital in northern Italy in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. Zsolt Kelemen, Head of the Disaster Management Working Group of the EU Strategy for Danube Region Priority Area 5 on Environmental Risks and vice president of the Hungarian Firefighters’ Association, will provide an overview of the learnings that resulted from the training of volunteers during the floods that struck the Danube region in 2013 and how these have been applied to subsequent emergencies mobilising volunteers. Finally, Police Inspector Elizabeth Benson, head of Performance Development at West Midlands Police (the UK’s national CBRN centre), will address the pivotal question of online learning as an alternative to face-to-face training during crises that require sustained response from responders.

Participation is free and open to practitioners, researchers and other interested professionals from different disciplines. Each presentation will be followed by an exchange with participants. A position paper summarizing key outputs of the webinar – particularly identified challenges and best practices – will be published after the event.