Kouvola became a member of the Safe Community network on July 12, 2008. Kouvola has promoted removing obstacles to mobility and improving light traffic safety and come up with many other ways to prevent injuries and make the City safer.
Kouvola is the second Finnish municipality to be accepted as a member to the international Community network. The first Safe Community in Finland was Hyvinkää, which became a member in 2003.
Kouvola has conducted long-term development work on safety and accident prevention for several years already. As a part of this work, obstacles to mobility have been reduced and light traffic safety has been improved, and many other ways have been introduced to prevent injuries beforehand and to make the City a safer place to live. Safety work at schools is based on systematic safety assessments, towards which end a specific system has been created, including a registry matrix. The safety aspect of downtown Kouvola has been especially praised. The Safe Community network membership is a result of all this persistent activity. Unique in the Safe Community work in Kouvola is the development of a system for compiling injury statistics. The work done in the Injury Registration and Prevention Project of Kouvola Region (START) has resulted in an internationally unique system for registering injury causes. Statistical information on injury causes has been collected as a part of the patient information system in the regional hospital and health centres since 2002. Since the beginning of the year 2006, the system has been complemented with a web-based application for gathering injury information from day cares, schools and facilities for the elderly in the Northern Kymenlaakso region. The safety work in Kouvola is comprehensive. It aims to develop the operational and economic environment in the municipality in a way that the number of injuries of citizens and municipal employees is reduced, wellbeing is increased and the costs of health care become lower. At the same time, Kouvola strives to develop research activities relating to injury know-how and map out business opportunities for utilising injury prevention related methods and products. The Safe Community network membership granted to Kouvola on July 12, 2008 proves that the whole organisation of the city is determined to conduct long-term systematic development work for improving safety. The work is done jointly with all the administrative sectors, all the while developing new forms of co-operation between the citizens, organisations and businesses. Additional information: Risk Management Manager, Tel. +358 20 615 7603
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