Building Effective Exercises through Partner
Collaboration (143)
Jennifer Laflin, NOAA
National Weather Service, Pleasant Hill,
MO
Trenton Pittman, Johnson
County Emergency Management and Communications
Alan Garrison, FEMA
Region VII
Abstract:
Exercises are used routinely
by emergency management and by the National Weather Service to sharpen and test
specific skills, as well as to serve as a refresher for duties that are not
performed regularly. In order for these exercises to be as effective as
possible, they should simulate realistic scenarios that occur over the
participating agencies' area of jurisdiction, and should require participants
to closely replicate the duties typically performed by those agencies. While
the use of a past event as an exercise scenario can meet all of those criteria,
it can also limit effectiveness through familiarity on the part of exercise
participants. In addition, communication with partner agencies is typically
performed during severe weather and other high-impact scenarios, and should
also be simulated in an effective exercise. This presentation will discuss a
number of tools and methods that can be used to create realistic weather-based
exercise scenarios, how to include communication with partner agencies during
several types of exercises, and will give examples of exercises performed by
the National Weather Service office in Kansas City/Pleasant Hill, MO with
several partners including local and federal levels of emergency management and
the broadcast media