How U.K. can better prepare for emergencies

to respond to emergencies and ensure public wellbeing.”

The researchers have also emphasized the value of exercises in achieving familiarization with other organizations. This demands multi-agency collaboration and co-ordination, enabling staff and participants to build new relationships and trust with different working cultures. Anderson comments: “Organizations involved in emergency planning and responses have different working styles, hierarchies and structures so that exercises will be challenging in different ways to all involved.”

Anderson says: “The informal interaction between individuals and groups afforded by exercises is also central to their value. In our white papers and user guides we indicate how and why maximum learning can be gained and retained from the design, planning and prosecution of exercises. Improved exercising will help local authorities and other organizations be better prepared for the range of emergencies they face”

The research project was funded by the ESRC and carried out by researchers from Durham University, Royal Holloway, and Newcastle University. The project involved a major dissemination event attended by forty practitioners including members of local authorities, police, Red Cross, Ministry of Defense, the Home Office, the Government Decontamination Service and numerous Local Resilience Forums.

ESRC says that the project approach was threefold: firstly, analysis of major documentation surrounding the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act. Secondly, in-depth interviews with emergency planners primarily from local authorities throughout the United Kingdom. The interviews focused on how exercises were designed, planned, and undertaken and learnt from in the light of a range of threats and hazards facing the United Kingdom. Thirdly, observation of exercises and occasions of planning for exercises by the project team. This included focus on how multi-agency collaborations occur at various stages of an exercise, how exercises could be staged in a realistic way and the role of umpires, players and directors — plus the specific ways in which response in time-pressured complex situations is rehearsed.

The research is accredited to the RCUK Global Uncertainties program. Global Uncertainties is examining the causes of insecurity and how security risks and threats can be predicted, prevented and managed. The program is one of six RCUK priority themes and brings together the activities of all seven U.K. Research Councils to better integrate current research investments as well as support new multi-disciplinary research in security.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the U.K.’s largest organization for funding research on economic and social issues.

— Read more in Staging and Performing Emergencies: The Role of Exercises in U.K. Preparedness