Emergency and Disaster Response: Training and Simulation is the title of a one-day RUSI conference on October 25.
Invited speakers to RUSI at Whitehall, London SW1A 2ET include: Tony McNulty, Minister of State, Home Office; Jenny Deere, Director Leadership Academy, CENTREX; Gill Newton, Chief Executive, Fire Service College; and Ken Lawson, Director of Training and Doctrine, Emergency Planning College.
The threat of international terrorism and the vulnerability of our interconnected society increasingly requires emergency and disaster responses involving many organisations, public and private, the institute says.
Training and exercising are fundamental to achieving a combined response; it is through such activity that experience, expertise and trust can be built within and between responder communities. Many of the dangers that the UK faces today however, are of such an extreme nature that there is scant historical evidence to base training and exercises on. Likewise, the temperate climate, large industrial base and ageing and congested transportation infrastructure within the UK are all vulnerable and variable. Combined with the dense population, consequential disasters could escalate rapidly, having a disproportionately high impact in terms of injury and loss of life. Simulation may help by providing insights into such extreme events, yet they have their own limitations and are rarely predictive in that they describe the exact consequences.
Questions
The questions this workshop aims to address are: under what circumstances are simulations useful? what new insights can they bring? how do you combine them into training and exercising? Delegates will take part in a live debate about the use of simulations. Delegates will be able to interact with the latest simulation and training products for emergency and disaster response at the workshop exhibition.
