UNIC takes part in CRISIS Project Transnational Meeting

The University of Minho hosted a transnational meeting of the Erasmus+ CRISIS project, at its campus between 7-8 July, 2022. CRISIS aims to develop a new job profile for Smart City Resilient Officers (SCROs) and to design, develop and deliver a pilot training program to certify the first cohort of SCROs.

The main idea of the CRISIS project is that “Research on smart cities infrastructure is in the focus of the scientific community; however, less attention has been targeted to the human resources who are going to support the smart cities at strategic, tactical, and operational level,” as Prof. P. Fitsilis, Professor at the University of Thessaly and Co-ordinator of the CRISIS project, emphasised. By identifying real competence gaps, the CRISIS project suggests a comprehensive approach for the professional development of trainees and the advancement their portfolio of competencies, hence improving their employability. In this respect, this project addresses demand in the labour market in these topics that has been recently reinforced by emerging international crisis.

The following are the primary goals of the CRISIS project: a) Develop an innovative curriculum for SCROs (currently there is none available), b) Provide innovative learning tools, c) Close the competence and skills gap for municipalities officials, d) Promote the European Collaboration on smart cities’ education, e) Promote Member States, Local Authorities’ awareness of the need for smart cities staff to be educated on resilience, f) Increase the awareness of the Member States, Local Authorities, and g) Expand on significant output from other ERASMUS+ projects, such the SmartDevOps project. The initiative will concentrate on applying new instructional methods and trans-disciplinary approaches, including concept mapping, problem-solving, group-based, project-based, peer, and participatory learning in order to engage, inspire, motivate, and stimulate learners throughout the learning process.

University of Thessaly co-ordinates the CRISIS project, which is funded by the ERASMUS+ programme. The consortium consists of: the Hellenic Open University (Greece), the University of Nicosia (Cyprus), the University of Minho (Portugal) and Fern Universität Hagen (Germany). The project will last for 24 months with a total budget of almost 315000 Euros.