Organisation
Within the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management the Departmental Coordination Centre for Crisis Management takes the lead in the area of crisis management.
The Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (VenW) is one of the thirteen ministries which make up the national government. The ministry consists of the policy departments and executive departments, as well as the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat), the Transport, Public Works and Water Management Inspectorate (Inspectie Verkeer en Waterstaat) and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI).
The main goals of VenW are to protect the Netherlands against water and to ensure secure connections of international quality. Accordingly, the ministry’s mission statement is: reliable with water, progressive in connections.
The Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management is nationally responsible for policy development, policy procedure and inspections within a number of sectors relating to water, roads and transport. The Ministry of Transport and Water Management splits these into nine policy areas:
- Air transport
- Road transport
- Weather
- Railways
- Inland waterways
- Shipping, Ports and the North Sea
- Water quantity
- Water quality
- Pipelines
In all these branches the Ministry collaborates with a large number of parties, internationally as well as nationally and regionally.
More information: Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management
Tasks and Responsibilities
The DCC-VenW is the 24hr central coordination point for crisis management (calamities and crises) with its most important functions being the supervision of the whole process and the coordination of information within the Ministry’s policy areas. The duty officers from the DCC-VenW are available 24hrs a day and have a large network of about forty crisis coordinators within the whole VenW organisation. The DCC-VenW also functions as the contact point for the National Crisis Centre (NCC) and the National Coordinator of Terrorism Prevention within the Ministry of Justice.
The main tasks of the DCC-VenW are summarised as:
- Preparing the framework for the Ministry’s overall crisis management policy
- Organising training and safety drills for the whole Ministry
- Coordinating and facilitating the operation during crises
- The general supervision of the overall process during a crisis and operational support to those in a single sector
- Carrying out evaluations as the follow up to a crisis
