Responsible behaviour is still the most important factor when it comes to human safety.
We rarely hear anything in the media about the Croatian emergency services, which is usually a sign that they are doing their job well. Even when they attract the public attention, it is often due to some positive story about saving unwary tourists who set off to conquer the Velebit Mountain in flip-flops or about helicopter transport of pregnant women and patients, reports liderpress.hr on April 10, 2016.
However, while not in the public focus, the emergency medical services have gone through a modernization process. Among the improvements are the applications available to citizens that facilitate their communication with the emergency services and increase safety. For instance, towards the end of the last year an app was developed, within the e-Police project, with detailed instructions how to quickly inform the police, including by sending the photo of a suspicious event, about a potential offence or crime. The procedure is very simple and involves several steps. The citizen makes a photo using a smart device (it is advisable to keep the geographic coordinates “on”), and sends it the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ central portal. The person sending the photo can write a comment or a description of the event, and thus continue the communication with police officers who received the message in order to answer any additional questions.
The emergency medical service also has its e-service – eHitna is an emergency information system intended for improvement of the reporting units’ operations. It helps medical workers to control their own activities, with patients receiving medical help within an hour, while the service management can monitor the business operations and have a better control over them.
Moreover, technology is of great use when it comes to the fire-fighters monitoring systems, as it allows processing of special data and an insight into the situation inside a specific area. Croatian fire-fighting community has developed a system that helps it position vehicles and manpower on the ground, define the sectors of intervention and plan for fire protection. All the data entered by fire-fighters or operators in the operations centre can be viewed on a smartphone or tablet.
Milan Erjavec, head of the Emergency 112 Service at the State Directorate for Protection and Rescue, believes that Croatian emergency services are well equipped and coordinated with each other and that the country, as a member of the EU and a tourist destination, is implementing all the European standards related to the safety of the citizens and tourists. “However, the general security situation is mostly affected by the responsible behaviour of individuals and by society’s preventive actions”, Erjavec added, emphasizing the importance of education of citizens.
