An Introduction to Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation

by Robert McCreight

Overview

The fourth edition of An Introduction to Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation is designed to help practitioners and students of emergency management understand various aspects of the exercise design process. It provides a unique perspective since it is the first edition published since the COVID-19 pandemic. It arrives in 2023 looking back almost four years on the issues and challenges emergency managers faced on the threshold of a new decade in 2020. Since then, the country has faced the COVID pandemic along with at least twenty-four weather related disasters that killed and injured hundreds.
Emergency exercises are an important component of an organization's emergency planning and preparedness, yet few emergency managers and practitioners have training in designing or evaluating them. In this updated and practical handbook, the author explains the essential elements and core principles of exercise design and evaluation. This fourth edition of An Introduction to Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation focuses on natural disasters and technological emergencies that occur in communities of any size. It provides emergency planners, public health professionals, emergency managers, police officers, and fire fighters with an in-depth look at exercise design issues and an accessible guide to designing and evaluating emergency exercises. This edition includes a new material on what to expect in emergency management through 2030.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641433914
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	05/02/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert McCreight has advised federal and state government on spectrum risk issues such as WMD threats, EMD scenarios, crisis management, and strategic analysis over a 47-year career. The author of four books and numerous journal articles on homeland security, national defense, and emergency management, he also served as an adjunct professor at Penn State, George Mason, George Washington, and Virginia Tech, where he taught graduate courses in crisis and emergency management, homeland security, defense policy, and assessing WMD threats. He is the author of An Introduction To Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation (Bernan Press, 2016).

Table of Contents

Preface v

1 Emergency Exercises: Objectives & Purpose 1

2 Essential Exercise Design Elements and Steps 15

3 Issues in Exercise Design 29

4 Exercise Organization and Structure 51

5 Exercise Control and Management 69

6 Exercise Evaluation Principles 81

7 Exercise Evaluation Issues 93

8 Summing It Up 109

Appendices 117

Appendix A Glossary 117

Appendix B Evaluation Guides 137

Appendix C MSEL Sample 139

Appendix D Tackling Tabletop Exercises 141

Appendix E Useful Resources 153

Appendix F Information Sharing and Message Management 159

Notes 163

Bibliography 165

Index 167

About the Author 169

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The climate of catastrophic disasters and terrorist incidents continues to place demands upon professionals in the field of emergency management. Dr. Bob McCreight shares his vast knowledge in preparing both students and practitioners alike in managing these real and unforeseen dangers to establish pathways toward resolution. He meticulously demonstrates the crawl, walk, run phases of exercise development and implementation. Dr. McCreight does not disappoint in this third edition in providing us with a critical roadmap for success for the applied field of emergency management.” — Thomas J. Carey, EdD, CEM, CPP Monmouth University “Bob McCreight provides a primer on the value and purpose of emergency management exercises. The exercise design and planning processes shared by Bob are invaluable tools for preparing emergency managers to prepare the Nation for catastrophic disasters.” —Dr. Kelly Garrett, EdD, MSeD, MSLBE, Director of the Emergency Management Professional Program at the Emergency Management Institute   “I welcome Robert’s new research and insight into the challenge of keeping the grid safe, stable, and secure. I have been impressed that at least one state is exercising the horrific scenario of malicious penetration of that grid and its potential long-term impact and complicated recovery. I believe Robert’s new edition provides a firm foundation on which to design, conduct, and evaluate such exercises that will become more frequent in the months and years ahead. Overall, it is a book that can potentially help us build new skills in the profession and support the culture of preparedness.” — Kay C. Goss, CEM Former Associate FEMA Director in charge of National Preparedness, Training, Higher Education, and Exercises

Preface

Introduction   Revisions to the first edition after its publication in 2011 have been undertaken with the aim of including new material, updates, and additional observations. In this instance I continue to advocate more complex scenarios and situations which feature high risk threats should be the focus of emergency exercises in the second and third decade of the 21st century. This can only be done by explicitly examining these challenges through the conduct of robust exercises. By  drawing attention to unique exercise design issues at a significantly sharper level of detail my objective in supplementing the text is designed to help practitioners and students of emergency management understand obvious, subtle and indirect aspects of the exercise design process.     In the decades following 2015 there will be increased pressure on state and local governments to demonstrate that ramped up and enhanced emergency performance in response and recovery operations has benefitted from prior years of experience. Well-crafted exercises can deliver on this expectation.  The sheer variety of emergency challenges include natural disasters, industrial and infrastructural accidents, system failures and terrorism.  Communities should be prepared for any scenario from the simplest to the most complex and challenging.   However, not all are enthusiastic about exercises providing the ‘magic bullet’  to enhance overall performance. Some remain doubtful that exercises alone can strengthen emergency response.  Today some hesitance remains about sharing insights and lessons learned from similar tabletops, drills and sophisticated deployed exercises doubtful that such events can impart operational wisdom and applicable insights which focus on the multiplicity of operational issues involved.  This regrettably remains true in the international arena as well.  One goal of this book is to encourage wider sharing of exercise outcomes and insights to the benefit of all engaged in the serious pursuit of better emergency management.   More must be done to share perspectives and isolate key operational principles where possible so that real savings in lives and property can be attained.  As such, efforts will be made in this new edition to focus on relevant subjects and themes which are compelling and rightly deserve some further discussion, analysis and elaboration such as these topics which merit attention via crafted emergency exercises that primarily focus on and deal with:   ·Continuity of operations ·Dealing with WMD events ·Mass casualty disasters ·Infrastructure emergencies ·Unified command ·Homeland defense ·Business continuity planning ·Complex catastrophic emergencies ·Cybersecurity emergencies ·Energy grid collapse crises ·Agrosecurity crises ·Sustained and stressed emergency operations   New language and selected text inserts will aim to underscore where these diverse issues, subjects and themes can best be dealt with inside the overall context of emergency exercise design and how these items might affect approaches to exercise evaluation activities.  In most situations, well designed exercises will clarify and enhance the specific functions, roles, tasks and activities which will likely unfold in the midst of an actual emergency and thereby shine a light on which key behaviors, decisions, interventions and communications will ultimately prove to strengthen and upgrade the overall level of emergency response.     Preface Designing emergency exercises and developing useful mechanisms for evaluating those exercises is a mixture of art and science. The scientific aspect involves identifying the essential elements, principles, and structural issues associated with making emergency exercises worthwhile and providing practical operational value to practitioners and professionals. My aim is to help students of emergency management grasp and understand the core issues as well. The artful dimension of exercise design and evaluation is pinpointing the variables, ambiguities, and risks associated with structuring, coordinating, and evaluating complex pseudo-emergencies events meant to replicate reality. Combining the two is vital to create a valuable learning experience. With this in mind, my focus is on natural disasters and technological emergencies more so than terrorism. The book’s focus is on small to medium-size cities and those wishing to get an in-depth look at exercise design issues. Finding a suitable guide or textbook to navigate this field of endeavor recalls the “needle in a haystack” analogy. To be sure, there are many guides and handbooks generated by state or local emergency management agencies that are helpful and instructive. However, what is needed is a textbook that includes the fundamentals and allows students and researchers to further enhance their knowledge by investigating those publications, inter- viewing emergency managers, observing the work of an exercise planning team, or just witnessing an actual exercise unfold. Hopefully, this book will supply the fundamentals that enable all students, practitioners and experts to agree on common terms, principles, and strategies. My emphasis is to explore both the value and purposes of scenario-based and capabilities- based exercises. Emergency exercises address and reveal the significant gaps between plans and capabilities. More importantly, well crafted exercises will draw attention to those areas of doctrine, staff training and operational requirements which can be validated and which deserve a second look for revision or adaptation. The overall aim of this book is to make it easier for emergency managers, emergency planners, academic leaders in emergency management and students of emergency management to understand some of the fundamentals associated with exercise design. Seldom does one find a credible and reliable college level course which seeks to impart this information however for those who embark on that effort this book should provide a useful introduction. The variety of exercise options available are built upon the fundamental educational principle that progressively difficult emergency exercises build effective learning, enhance comprehension, and ultimately increase emergency preparedness and operational readiness. Even with staff turnover, limited funds, and experience, some localities will seek exercises that stretch and stress their emergency responders. This book aims to help in that regard by providing specific guidance that is useful, less rigorous, and more flexible than the highly structured DHS HSEEP program. The overall purpose of the book is to reinforce the twin notions that 1.Well-designed exercises enhance emergency readiness, verify prepared- ness, test emergency planning assumptions, and sharpen response functions; and 2.Exercise evaluations that are comprehensive, honest, and analytical make a real difference in validating emergency preparedness and readiness if necessary changes are incorporated into EO plans and improved readiness procedures. It is also useful to point out the merits of the “progressive” education principle embedded in the successive iteration of emergency exercise train-ing programs. All of these approaches start with less complex emergency exercises and progress through a series of increasingly complex emergency exercises to verify preparedness and test readiness. That is how better emergency management happens—not accidentally. Of course, in any textbook odyssey, errors of omission, oversight and commission are mine exclusively. I want to thank all those who in recent years have been instrumental in shaping my own evolving sense of what matters and what doesn’t in the growing field of emergency management. There were several key persons whose views were invaluable as I sought to revise this volume and create a 2nd edition. I apologize for not listing them all. Some of these helpful souls include Don Donahue, Curry Mayer, Chuck Manto, Irmak Renata-Tenali, Tom Carey, and Mark Troutman. Special thanks are due for those who read early drafts of the first edition and provided invaluable comments and suggestions to improve the text—they are the experts after all—like former Maryland State Public Health Director James “Smokey” Stanton, DCFD HAZMAT Battalion Chief John Donnelly, and former Oregon State EM Director Myra Lee. Robert McCreight  

Editorial Reviews

This book can help organize thinking about the issues that make the exercises successful.

Natural Hazards Observer

This book belongs on every emergency manger's, training officer's, and incident commander's desk. In clear, practica, and concise terms, McCreight introduces and describes various types of emergency and disaster preparedness exercises, and provides a framework for units of all sizes and geographic locations to execute training and exercising in their home areas of responsibility. This book is crucial to all the players to enable effective and efficient emergency preparedness, and can help managers and responders stay at the top of the game for their communities.

James R. "Smokey" Stanton