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Disaster Management

Peacekeeping Operations
Civil-Military Cooperation

Humanitarian relief in the past has been an ad-hoc affair for civilian relief agencies and the military alike.

To better prepare all participants, the COE offers assistance with training exercises, complete with scenario development, modeling and processes to plan and prepare for emergency response, whether natural, technologic, or complex humanitarian emergency. Training focuses on the application of concepts for response, include exercises. Gaming pursues a structured sequence of sessions in which players respond to scenarios under a set of constraints which might be found in a disaster response. Training offers practical methods of teaching that offer several advantages: it develops insights into complex problems and issues, generates policy options not previously considered, provides a laboratory for synthesis of diverse information. It also allows the examination of other viewpoints, positions, and potential solutions to problems in a controlled environment. Further, it provides a networking forum for participants with the actual people and within the actual roles they would work with in a disaster situation.

The Center for Excellence looks continually at ways to improve training opportunities whether on the tabletop or in the field. An important project for the COE in the continuing development of better training components was the Authenticating Civil-Military Exercises: Working Group 98-1. This unique workshop was organized as a direct result of observations made by non-governmental and international organizations invited to play a part in the U.S. military's civil-military exercises. This workshop brought together thirty-five (35) subject matter expects who have extensive field experience and have participated in U.S. military exercises to critique past exercises and to offer recommendations for improving and adding realism to future exercises.

The Center for Excellence also looks at methods and mechanisms to improve information sharing between non-governmental organizations and the intelligence community in exercises. The COE helps develop communications and information sharing mechanisms (a common problem in all disasters).

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Photo by Peter Leentjes