Following a needs analysis of those living in the cross-border areas between Lithuania's Marijampolé & Alytus regions and the Podlaskie & Warmińsko-Mazurskie regions of Poland, a joint project was launched to improve both countries emergency services' response times and to promote the EU-wide 112 emergency number.
- 18 December 2015
The project has improved the safety of the cross-border region and the quality of working conditions of emergency services, especially the fire brigades. Our activities are today much better coordinated. Through implementation of modern connection systems, it is now possible to immediately call all the required rescue services and keep in contact with all the patrols sent on site.
There had traditionally been a lack of cooperation between the Lithuanian and Polish emergency services, chiefly due to the insufficient integration between the existing services of the two countries and the lack of a developed infrastructure that could handle and maintain the use of the standard EU 112 emergency number.
Under the ERDF-funded project, new alerting and dispatch centres were established with the express intention of receiving and dealing with 112 calls. As a result, these emergency calls were better intercepted and routed to the relevant emergency service in the country of origin, speeding up response times.
Improved emergency services for 1 million people
With the creation of a new and fully compatible 112 service came a closer cooperation and an overall improvement in service quality. Practical knowledge was shared and developed, leading to a streamlining and improvement of the provision of emergency services to the 1 008 443 people living in the cross-border area.
Within the region, over 30 000 calls are received and processed by the new system every day.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Management of the rescue operations and the European rescue number operating system” is EUR 4 083 436, of which the EU’s European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 3 470 921 from the Operational Programme “Lithuania-Poland” for the 2007 to 2013 programming period.