On March 18-19th, the ECHO consortium gathered in Málaga, Spain, for an important two-day meeting combining an EU-wide resilience workshop and the General Assembly. The event was hosted by the entire Spanish pilot team, who welcomed partners to discuss progress, align next steps, and strengthen collaboration across the project.

The workshop focused on exchanging experiences from the three pilot countries (Slovenia, Italy, Spain) and discussing causes of common resilience challenges across different territories, stakeholder types, and governance levels. Partners discussed current practices, gaps, and opportunities for improvement in areas such as planning, coordination, information sharing, resources, and collaboration before, during, and after crises. These discussions will help shape the next stages of the project, including the development of the Resilience Strategy and various tools and services.

During the General Assembly, the consortium concentrated on the technical and user-oriented dimension of the project. A key objective was to review the user needs captured in the user stories and compare them against the features currently planned or available in the ECHO tools and services. This helped identify where the project is already well aligned with stakeholder expectations and where further refinement is needed. The discussion covered several core ECHO solutions, including threat monitoring, risk assessment, situational awareness, decision support, resilience plan evaluation, and training and simulation.

The Málaga meeting was an important milestone for the project. It provided an opportunity not only to validate current assumptions and align on future development, but also to ensure that ECHO remains firmly grounded in the real needs of its users.

For more information about the project, visit https://echo-horizon.eu/.