Croatia's national civil protection authority with expertise in critical infrastructure resilience, disaster preparedness, and regional emergency coordination.
Drzavna uprava za zastitu i spasavanje (DUZS) was Croatia's national civil protection and rescue directorate — the public authority responsible for organizing disaster preparedness, emergency response coordination, and protection of people and property from natural and man-made hazards across the country. In H2020 projects, DUZS contributed the operational credibility and governmental perspective that academic partners alone cannot provide: real emergency management procedures, national regulatory context, and direct access to Croatia's civil protection infrastructure. Their participation in EU-CIRCLE and DAREnet reflects a mandate to improve cross-border resilience coordination, particularly in the context of climate-related risks to critical infrastructure and regional disaster response networks.
EU-CIRCLE (2015–2018) built a pan-European framework for strengthening critical infrastructure against climate-driven disruptions, with DUZS providing national civil protection expertise.
DAREnet (2017–2023) established the Danube River Region Resilience Exchange Network, with DUZS contributing as a national authority participant in regional coordination.
Both projects drew on DUZS's core institutional mandate — organizing national-level protection and rescue operations — to ground European research in real governmental practice.
Participation across both the P3-CLIMATE and P3-SECURITY Horizon 2020 pillars reflects experience at the intersection of environmental risk and public safety.
DUZS's two-project H2020 trajectory shows a shift in collaboration mode rather than topic: EU-CIRCLE (2015) involved them in a large technical research framework building analytical tools for infrastructure resilience, while DAREnet (2017) moved toward network-building and knowledge exchange among regional actors across the Danube area. The keywords attached to DAREnet — resilience, network, innovation — suggest a pivot from contributing to technical outputs toward facilitating practitioner communities and inter-governmental cooperation. In essence, the progression is from research participant to regional network actor.
DUZS was moving toward regional coordination and practitioner network roles, suggesting future value as a national authority anchor in Central/Eastern European multi-country resilience consortia.
DUZS participated exclusively as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — across both projects, reflecting the typical role of a national public authority validating research rather than leading it. With 37 unique partners across 16 countries from only two projects, they joined large, geographically broad consortia rather than tight bilateral arrangements. This signals they are well-suited as a national legitimacy partner or practitioner reference point within larger applied research or coordination projects.
Despite only two H2020 projects, DUZS accumulated 37 unique consortium partners across 16 countries — a high ratio that reflects their participation in large pan-European consortia. Their network spans both the climate adaptation and civil security research communities.
As the Croatian national civil protection directorate, DUZS brought something no university or think-tank can replicate: direct operational authority over disaster response at the national level and a regulatory mandate that gives EU research outputs real-world grounding. For consortium builders in civil protection, climate adaptation, or infrastructure security, a national public authority from Southeast Europe is a valued partner for geographic coverage, policy legitimacy, and access to practitioner networks. Their involvement in both a pan-European framework (EU-CIRCLE) and a regional Danube network (DAREnet) demonstrates genuine cross-scale engagement rather than token participation.
