Author: Paul van Soomeren, Founder of DSP- Groep (DSP)
Did you know that millions of businesses and organisations are applying and using European standards every day? The more you know about standards, the more you will recognise the benefits of them.
Standards make our lives safer, simpler, more comfortable and more efficient. But standards only work when they are properly used. Do you want to make sure that your child’s toys are safe? Then watch out for the EN71 series of standards on toy safety. Do you care about risk management? That’s where the standard EN ISO 31000 for risk management comes in.
Often, we can only appreciate the importance of a standard when it is missing or has not been properly applied — because then things do not work as they should.
Do you want to know about Crime Prevention through Urban Design & Planning and make sure that CP-UDP is implemented with the right partners in a good process, then download the CEN 14383 series of standards, technical reports and technical specifications (https://standards.cen.eu/)
(The above text is adapted from CEN website)
About CEN and crime prevention standards, documents and guidelines
CEN (European Committee for Standardisation) based in Brussels is the umbrella group made up of 34 national European standardisation institutes. The CEN is a lively place where academics and practitioners from all over Europe meet to talk, think and decide about standards. European Standards (ENs) are based on a consensus, which reflects the economic and social interests of the CEN umbrella group and are channelled through their national standardisation organisations (NSOs).
Most standards are initiated by the business and profit sector. Other standardisation projects can come from consumers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), associations or even European legislators. Besides European standards, CEN produces other reference documents, which can be developed quickly and easily: technical specifications, technical reports and workshop agreements.
A standard is a text about a product, process or service explaining what a product is (and can range from a door to a nuclear installation) as well as what a process is (from quality management in an organisation to a general risk management process in society).
A standard is a voluntary agreement. One might say that standards are the laws of the profit sector, but only insofar as profit organisations voluntarily agree to comply with one or more specific standards. Take, for example, the ISO worldwide standard on quality management. If an organisation decides to organise its quality management system according to the ISO standard on quality management (the ISO 9000 series), the organisation can do so, but complying implies that you really follow the rules and requirements as set in the standard. This is checked on a regular basis by an objective outsider that is certified to do so. The same goes for a standardised process of risk management and might also go for a standardised process for Crime Prevention through Urban Design & Planning (CP-UDP).
CEN workshop on crime risks
The Cutting Crime Impact project was presented by CCI partner, Paul van Soomeren (DSP) at the event ‘Prevention and management of crime risks – safe location, safe city’, which took place on 8 to 9 October 2019 in Brussels. CCI partner Efus was also present at this event and discussed their organisation and approach to the protection of public spaces – including the European Commission's 'Action Plan to Support the Protection of Public Spaces.'
During this event, a group of experts from several European countries took part in a workshop on ‘the prevention and management of crime risks in publicly accessible urban environment’ . During the workshop, the Swedish experience in networking within Crime prevention through Urban Design and Planning (CP-UDP) was presented and the European and worldwide standardisation of CP-UDP was explained.
The workshop was closely linked to the standardisation meetings of the European standardisation committee CEN/TC 325 "Crime prevention through building, facility and area design" and its working groups.
Standards and guidelines on CP-UDP: Europe (CEN/CCI) goes worldwide (ISO)
About 20 years ago a series of European standards and guidelines on crime prevention were developed by CEN. For further information on their history and evaluation, see the report published in October 2014 by EU COST Action TU 1203) here.
Recently, a few European countries led by the Czech Standardisation body decided these old CEN documents on CP-UDP were still going strong, but required a necessary update.
Around a year ago, work started with the Working Groups (WGs) under the Technical Committee TC 325 of CEN. Convenors of the WGs were officially installed:
Also, the route for cooperation with a worldwide ISO working group working on a worldwide CPTED standard (Crime Prevention through Environmental Design) was explored and links were made.
In the last meeting of the WGs — and later that same day — the TC 325 preliminary work on terminology of CP-UDP using the existing European standard EN 14383-1 was officially started and the work done earlier by the EU COST Action TU 1203 on CP-UDP ( www.costtu1203.eu ).
For the existing document of CEN on the process and partnerships in CP-UDP, a rather spectacular route was paved: the European Working group will officially liaise with the standardisation work done on CPTED by the International Standardisation Institute (ISO). This implies that the experts will try to develop a worldwide standard on ‘crime prevention through environmental design, planning and management’ based on the existing European CEN documents. Europe goes worldwide in CP-UDP! For this work, liaisons with Efus, EUCPN ( www.eucpn.org ) and the worldwide working
International CPTED Association ( www.cpted.net ) have been put in place.
Beware though! … standardisation is a very slow process of consensus building. The outcome might be a text of 10-20 pages on CP-UDP, but it will take some time to build a worldwide consensus about that text. In the future, we might look back and say that Europe, CEN and the Cutting Crime Impact (CCI) project funded under Horizon 2020 have been a strong basis for worldwide consensus of what CP-UDP is and does …. Or will that be CPTED? Let the consensus-battles begin!
