02 December, 2020

CIT’s Clean Technology Centre (CTC) is the joint technical lead partner on the new European project Green Skills for Firefighters.

The project, which is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, will develop the first open and multilingual e-learning platform for firefighters on green skills to improve the environmental impacts of fire services in terms of pollution, waste, water and energy consumption. 

The e-learning platform will be accessible from computers, tablets and smartphones and will be available in 5 languages (English, Danish, Lithuanian, Greek and Spanish).

The Clean Technology Centre will develop the course materials under six main headings:

Module 1: Operations. How firefighters can carry out their daily operations out of the fire station (e.g. fire fighting) in a greener way.
Module 2: Energy. How to reduce electricity consumption in the fire station.
Module 3: Water. How to reduce water consumption in the fire station.
Module 4: Waste. How to increase the percentage of station waste that is recycled.
Module 5: Transport. How to reduce CO2 emissions.
Module 6: Society. How to promote sustainable behaviours in the local community.

CTC will be collaborating directly with Cork City Fire Brigade who will provide input into the training materials as well as trialling it. They will also engage with other fire services in Ireland, as well as the international fire services linked to the participating countries.

The project is an initiative of Frederiksborg Fire and Rescue Service (Denmark) in collaboration with: Cork Fire Brigade (Ireland), National Fire Officers Alliance (Lithuania), Cyprus Fire Service (Cyprus), EuroBomberos (Spain), Clean Technology Centre at Cork Institute of Technology, LearnKey (Lithuania), Technical University of Denmark (Denmark) and Neptelia (Spain).

On 26th November, the delegates from the nine partner organisations met online and established the guidelines and work plan for the development of the e-learning platform. Once the first development is completed, the e-learning platform will be tested.

Firefighters will first complete the e-learning and afterwards, put in practice what they have learnt by implementing some measures of environmental sustainability in their fire stations.

Based on the feedback from the testers, the project partners will define and implement the necessary improvements before its publication in May 2023.

The e-learning platform will be published under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to freely use it, modify it and build upon it.

Visit the project website here

Get in touch with us to explore how you can collaborate with CIT email: extendedcampus@cit.ie