EXERCISE
Training and exercises are vital components to providing emergency response agencies, non-governmental agencies, and community partners with the opportunity to improve both public safety and preparedness capabilities. A comprehensive training and exercise program is designed to improve operational readiness, reveal opportunities for improvement, and to illuminate resource gaps. A comprehensive training and exercise program is designed to improve interagency coordination and collaboration, clarify roles and responsibilities, enhance individual performance, and gain public recognition of preparedness and emergency response programs.
Our Office can:
Assist in planning, developing, conducting, and evaluating objective-based, scenario-driven exercises.
Provide technical assistance with Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Program (HSEEP) guidance.
The HSEEP methodology provides different exercise types for both discussion and operations based objectives, which can aide a jurisdiction in examining plans, capabilities, and identifying gaps. There are seven different types of exercises; the three most common types are:
Functional Exercise (FE) – this operations-based exercise is designed to test and evaluate individual capabilities, multiple functions or activities within a function, or interdependent groups or functions. The FE utilizes a system of exercise simulators and exercise injects to accomplish objectives with no movement or actual “boots on the ground” operations taking place.
Full-Scale Exercise (FSE) – the most complex of all exercise types, this operations-based exercise is typically a multiagency, multijurisdictional exercise designed to test the appropriate target capabilities identified early during the exercise planning process. Ideally, the FSE focuses on implementing and analyzing plans, policies, and procedures developed in discussion-based exercises, and honed in previous, smaller, operations-based exercises.
Evaluations tied to all types of exercises provide jurisdictions and exercise participants with the mechanism to utilize task-specific and performance-based criteria, which will be used to identify corrective actions and develop an improvement plan for future preparedness efforts and funding requests.
A comprehensive all-hazard exercise program begins with planning and training, continues with the exercise itself, and culminates with evaluation and the creation of an exercise After-Action Report / Improvement Plan (AAR/IP) of all activities that occurred during the process. The AAR/IP examines lessons learned during the exercise and transforms them into corrective actions.