An ambitious project application has been submitted to Horizon Europe, the European Union's most prestigious scientific research and innovation program, coordinated by Sakarya University's Sakarya Center for Economic and Social Research (SESAM). To strengthen the project's local implementation, a significant collaboration was established with the Sakarya Metropolitan Municipality Disaster Affairs Department, Sakarya's competent authority for disaster risk management.
The project, "RE-ACT: Resilient Communities Through Action-Oriented Training," coordinated by SESAM, was submitted under the Horizon Europe program's HORIZON-CL3-2025-01-DRS-01 call. This international initiative includes partners from Türkiye, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain.
The RE-ACT project aims to close the critical "knowledge-behavior gap" observed in disaster preparedness and to redefine resilience as a dynamic "social skill" developed within communities rather than institutional capacity. The project's innovative training methodologies and the Community Self-Organized Disaster Response (CSODR) model will be combined with the field experience and local coordination capacity of the SBB Disaster Affairs Department. Research findings, coordinated by SESAM, will be translated into concrete disaster policies with the expertise of the SBB Disaster Affairs Department, serving Sakarya's goal of becoming a more disaster-resilient city.
As SESAM, we are proud to represent our scientific strength in the international arena and to contribute to our city's resilience with our local stakeholders.
