Are you part of an 

Emergency Response team

deploying to hard-to-reach disaster areas? 

Join us to boost innovation in mobility and flexibility!

Looking back

Results of  MER 2020

The Mobility in Emergency Response (MER) Innovation Meeting took place Jan 17th and 18th, 2020. Emergency response professionals from NGOs, governments, military and private sector have been discussing required innovations on mobility and flexibility of disaster response teams.

The results of the meeting are summarized in a report:

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Read more about the program...

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About us

What is MER

The Mobility in Emergency Response (MER) Innovation Meeting is an open, international meeting with emergency response professionals discussing required innovations on mobility and flexibility of disaster response teams. These innovations improve the effectiveness of the response teams, especially when deploying to hard-to-reach areas. Innovations include physical products, software packages or collaboration policies and should be affordable to most response teams.

The MER Innovation Meeting will be held 17th and 18th January 2020 in Vaassen, the Netherlands.

Why Innovating?

Most teams use equipment and policies from the civil protection, military or regular camping sectors. While these are generally great tools, sometimes they are simply not good enough to respond adequately to disaster situations. Therefore we propose to focus more on innovation, creating the equipment that allows teams to:

  • be faster,
  • be more flexible,
  • be better prepared and
  • give higher quality care!
Man touching a technology innovation concept on a touch screen with his finger

“Flexibility can make the difference between
being of help and being a burden."

Pieter D. van Baardewijk

Who is invited?

Every professional team involved with disaster response, for instance medical, search & rescue, wash, goods distribution or other relevant emergency focus. Especially innovation managers and head logisticians might benefit from the MER Innovation Meeting.

Program  Details
Friday Jan 17th
10.00 - 17.30

Welcome
Introduction round

Trends in emergency response

what we can learn from an academic view on Emergency Response. (Amy Hughes, HCRI, time to be confirmed, by skype)

MAF disaster response lessons learned

operating over a 100 small aircraft and dedicated to help isolated people, MAF knows everything about the challenges of mobility in disaster areas. (John Woodberry, Global Disaster Response Manager)

improving collaboration with governments

from the point of view of a government (Hans van den Hoogen, Sr Humanitarian Advisor, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Interactive Current workflow analysis

which phases, topics and special situations are important in a deployment and how do they interact?

Identifying existing bottlenecks

17.30 and onwards
Diner, relaxing

Culture and social time!

Saturday Jan 18th
09.00 - 17.00

Recap on identifying bottlenecks
Clustering bottlenecks
Setting goals for solutions

EMT Mobile Standards

challenges in writing and tensions between high quality care and the mobility of teams. (Emma Brunette, time to be confirmed, by skype)

Advance team responding to the Bahamas

lessons learned from a Military Engineering mode of operation. (103rd Military Engineering Company, Royal Netherlands Army. Speaker and time to be confirmed)

Brainstorming innovative solutions

in dynamic workshops

Presenting solutions

Prioritizing
Creating a roadmap together

Reflections on the conference

and closing

As Senior Humanitarian Advisor in the Department for Stability and Humanitarian Aid, Hans is heavily involved with the support of humanitarian actors

Who is coming?

We welcome any co-operations in organizing this meeting. So far, these people and organisations are participating and/or contributing:

Hans van den Hoogen, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

As Senior Humanitarian Advisor of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hans is heavily involved with the support of humanitarian actors. He will be talking about the collaboration between governments with ngo’s and its impact on innovation.

John Woodberry, MAF

John is the Global Disaster Response Manager of MAF, an NGO operating over 100 aircraft and dedicated to help the most remote people on earth. They are experts on the limitations of mobility and challenges of hard-to-reach areas.

Ian Norton, Respond Global, former WHO

Ian has been head of the WHO Emergency Medical Team (EMT) initiative for 6 years. The initiative has grown to involve 130 countries and respond to mutiple emergencies at National, Regional and Global level.

Roles involved the creation and implementation of the Quality Assurance system of International EMTs, the implementation of capacity building for national and regional EMTs across every WHO region and the coordination of response by EMTs to the West African Ebola Outbreak, Nepal Earthquake, Outbreaks of Diphtheria among the Rohingya refugee camps and the Humanitarian trauma care pathways during conflict in Mosul and Syria.

103 Constructiecompagnie, Royal Netherlands Army

The 103rd Dutch Military Engineering Company responded to the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian in September 2019 with 550 people. One of it’s officers on the Advance team will share about their experiences and lessons learned.

Amy Hughes, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Dr Amy Hughes MBE – Clinical Academic Lecturer in Emergency Response.

Amy will be speaking on emergency response from an academic view, outlining trends and bigger pictures. She will attend the meeting by skype.

Amy is heavily involved in the development of the UK Internaional Emergency Trauma Register and training of its clinicians…

Stephanie van Drunen, Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation

DCHI is the platform where different sectors meet to realise more impact and less costs in the humanitarian sector through innovation.

Willem van Burgsteden, ZOA Netherlands

ZOA is involved in emergency disaster response and is interested in new innovations to improve service provision to the beneficiaries.

Corinna Schäfer, Cadus

As a humanitarian NGO active in emergency response, we regularly encounter challenges in the field that the community has not yet found a solution for. In our Crisis Response Makerspace we work on finding solutions and innovate to improve humanitarian aid. The conference will be useful for exchanging ideas with other NGOs how to tackle challenges, and to hear about their needs in the field, thereby gathering further inspiration for future innovations. We are hoping to go home with new ideas for solutions, and also with a clearer idea of challenges that other emergency NGOs are struggling with.

Rebekka Bodemer, RescueNet

Rebekka is the European Coordinator of RescueNet and will be attending the Innovation Meeting. She is looking for improvements in the areas of Medication & Cold chain, Clinical equipment, Wash and Power.

Pieter D. van Baardewijk

After his Developmental Psychology study at Utrecht University Pieter primarily invested most of his time in music. Dividing his attention between writing, performing and teaching music. Soon he joined the Flying Seagull Project, an international circus and theater company that works with underprivileged children from minority groups, over the last four years this has mostly been in refugee camps in Greece, France and Lebanon…

Several Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs) 

Bringing their immense experiences on what works great and where innovation is required with a clinical background, several EMTs are planning to join the MER Innovation Meeting. Whenever possible we will disclose their names and representatives!

Hospitainer

Emergency situations ask for immediate action, especially when people’s lives are at stake. Hospitainer’s philosophy and commitment therefore exists out of offering the right medical equipment and clinics at the right time and at the right place, to minimise human suffering…

Gert Jan Pieterse

Gert Jan is always seeking to develop challenging products that make living easier and more beautiful, with a strong contribution to a fair and sustainable world. He is especially passionate about disaster response which he expresses in volunteering in the rapid response relief team RescueNet…

Our mailing address is:
gertjan@mer-innovation.org
We value your privacy and will under no circumstances use your personal information for anything besides this MER Innovation Meeting without your permission.
Copyright © 2019 Gert Jan Pieterse Ingenieurswerk, All rights reserved.