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