The main objective of POP-ALERT is to prepare societies and populations to cope with crisis and disasters in a rapid, effective and efficient way by blending traditional Crisis Preparedness & First-Reaction strategies with the use of innovative contemporary tools.POP-ALERT proposes to undertake thorough behavioural research and take traditional Crisis Management research a step further by carrying out a series of empirical studies, taking into account new issues related to targeting both local populations and visitors such as expats or tourists (cultural differences, language barriers, etc.), in order to create a framework to facilitate the assessment of the population’s capacity to absorb and preparedness to make use of different Crisis Management strategies and technologies developed at the EU level.POP-ALERT will identify specific target success stories within existing and past community preparedness programmes and put together a portfolio of case studies on social networking and community self-reliance initiatives which could potentially be replicated to crisis with a European dimension and to cross-border disasters.The project will seek to study the best ways to blend contemporary tools with the existing practices identified in order to create flexible and easily deployable toolkits for preparing and alarming the European population in case of a crisis. The approach this project proposes for improving the current practices revolves around the use of messaging and cultural sharing technologies to create awareness using technologies and approaches that offer the best form of accessibility and penetration by citizens and authorities.POP-ALERT will propose a pilot project (designing criteria for selection of the area and population to be involved in the pilot, developing scenarios and objectives) in order to test the generic methodologies and to assess their effectiveness in raising an improved level of preparedness of the community.