IARU announces Second Global Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Conference

Like its predecessor, the second Global Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Conference (GAREC-2006), will take place in Tampere, Finland, on 19-20 June 2006.

This year GAREC will be held in the "Tampere Hall" convention center, just across the street from last year's venue, the former Ramada (now Holiday Inn) Hotel.

The reason for the change of venue is the fact that GAREC-2006 is a parallel event to the international Conference on Emergency Communications, ICEC-2006, where representatives of governments, regulatory authorities and relief organizations will review the application and implementation of the "Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations". Holding the two events at the same time in the same location allows us, to give a high visibility to the important role of amateur radio in emergency communications.

Continuing the work initiated by GAREC-2005, the Conference will consider the latest developments in the application of the amateur radio service to emergency communications, and the cooperation with institutional partners in emergency response and disaster relief. It will also review the progress
made on the concepts developed by GAREC-2006 and formulate additional proposals. The GAREC-2006 program is now available at http://www.rientola.fi/oh3ag/garec/2006.html the site where information on last year's conference can be found as well,
and on the IARU web at http://www.iaru.org/emergency.

Details of its parallel event, ICEC-2006, are published at http://www.icec2006.com/

Many new experiences resulted from dramatic events over the past 12 months, new lessons have been learned, and new concepts have been developed.

Proposals for specific topics to be considered by GAREC-2006 are very welcome, and IARU International Coordinator for Emergency Communications Hans Zimmerman, F5VKP / HB9AQI will be glad to answer any questions you might have.

Hans can be reached at:
hb9aqs@arrl.net

Source: Radio Amateurs of Canada

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