On 29 September 2026, TOGETHER brought practitioners from Oslo, Orihuela, Egaleo, Lisbon and Istanbul together online to try and answer one question: how can organisations, sectors and levels of government work better together before, during and after a disaster?
Effective disaster risk management depends on more than plans and technology. It requires people across organisations and administrative levels to understand one another’s roles, share information and make decisions together. The third TOGETHER webinar, Practitioner perspectives: Strengthening multi-level and cross-sectoral coordination in disaster risk management, put that challenge in the hands of the people who face it every day.
The session was organised through the TOGETHER Stakeholder Forum and hosted on the Crisis Management Innovation Network Europe (CMINE). It was chaired by Christopher White of the University of Strathclyde, with Abdelghani Meslem of NORSAR opening with an overview of the project.
The panel
- Evangelia Bakogianni, Municipality of Egaleo (Greece)
- Gonzalo Ortuño, Ayuntamiento de Orihuela (Spain)
- Osman Ibrahim, Oslo kommune (Norway)
- Pelin Koç, Turkish Red Crescent (Türkiye)
- Claudia Pinto, City of Lisbon (Portugal)
Panellists described the everyday obstacles that slow down joined-up action in their territories:
- responsibilities that are fragmented, unclear or overlapping;
- gaps between national, regional and local levels;
- barriers to sharing information and data between organisations with different systems and procedures;
- difficulty involving private-sector and civil-society actors;
- turning available risk information and scientific tools into coordinated decisions under pressure.
Comparing five European contexts showed that, while hazards differ, many of these barriers are shared.
How TOGETHER aims to help
The discussion linked these needs to the TOGETHER Toolkit, which works within existing governance systems rather than replacing them. It combines interoperability frameworks for sharing information safely, an AI-supported Multi-Tool System for situational awareness and risk-informed decisions, and a Disaster Risk Management and Governance Framework that clarifies roles and coordination pathways.
These solutions are being shaped with practitioners through Living Labs, public-private-civic partnerships, demonstrations and replication activities, such as the first Living Lab in Orihuela on flood resilience.
Looking ahead, the panel stressed what tools need to be useful beyond the project: a good fit with existing protocols, trust and clear ownership between institutions, legal and organisational conditions for data sharing, ease of use, and training for the people expected to use them.
Watch the recording
The full webinar is available on YouTube: TOGETHER Webinar #3 — Practitioner perspectives. Follow TOGETHER for upcoming Living Labs, webinars and results.