EU Cities Vulnerability Assessment

Abstract

For decades, terrorism has been a reality in many European countries and a continuous threat to a great number of European cities. It seriously threatens the safety, the values of democratic states and the rights and liberties of citizens. Over the years, strategies to protect public space against terrorism have strengthened and evolved, mainly focussing on protecting critical infrastructures. However, terrorist attacks are evolving as well. By adapting to new contexts and opportunities, lately public space has turned into an attractive target for terrorist attacks. These areas are considered as “soft targets”. This means that crowded public places including the metro, shopping centres, sports stadiums, bars, restaurants, clubs and commercial sidewalks, being easily accessible to the public constitute easy targets for terrorists to do great harm. In this context, the PRoTECT project aims to strengthen local authorities’ capabilities in public spaces protection by putting in place an overarching concept where tools, technology, training and field demonstrations will improve the awareness of local stakeholders towards improving direct responses to secure public places before, during and after a terrorist threat. In this chapter the results of vulnerability assessments that were conducted in five European countries using a prototype tool developed by the European Commission, as part of the EC funded project PRoTECT, are presented.KeywordsSoft targets Vulnerability assessment Public spaces Security Terrorist attacks