Implementation and Evaluation of Standardisation Activities in Crisis Management Through a Full-Scale Exercise

Abstract

STRATEGY project aims at selecting and implementing existing, evolving and new standards within solutions, tools, procedural guidelines and recommendations. The project will streamline and validate technical and organisational interoperability in a fully transboundary configuration with means of standards through the implementation of use cases involving EU and National Standardisation bodies. The main objective is to enhance the resilience of EU against all types of natural & manmade disasters (multi-hazard approach), through validating the standards of next-generation solutions and procedures ensuring an effective and efficient collaborative response. This article presents the validation activities carried out for two pre-standardisation items entitled ‘Specifications for Digital Scenarios for Crisis Managements’ and ‘Requirements for acquiring digital information from victims during Search and Rescue operations’. The results of the developments and the implementation and evaluation through a Full-Scale Exercise are presented which aimed at collecting feedback from key crisis management stakeholders which included first responders, academia and researchers, industry and public authorities.

Introduction

Technical and organisational interoperability in a fully transboundary configuration is considered of key importance considering that relevant authorities are required to manage a range of natural and human-made hazards that significantly impact the cascading effects on critical infrastructure and societies [1, 2]. Training exercises are employed by crisis management authorities in order to enhance preparation to effectively manage and respond to hazardous events. However, the majority of crisis management exercises follow traditional approaches such as paper-based scenarios [3, 4]. The development of a common data model for crisis management exercises is therefore considered of key importance and is the main focus of the first standardisation item which is entitled CWA 18019:2023 ‘Specifications for Digital Scenarios for Crisis Management Exercises’ [5]. The Trial Management Tool (TMT) [6] execution manager was used for the validation of the CWA and was adapted to the specifications of the scenarios incorporating the derived information from the Full-scale Exercise (FSX) in the form of injects.

During a crisis incident, first responders are also faced with a number of competing challenges and responsibilities to take control of the situation and deal effectively and efficiently with the wounded and deceased victims. As healthcare resources are limited due to the number of injured individuals, digital victim tracking systems are implemented to offer the greatest good to the greatest amount of people [7, 8]. The goal is to determine as quickly as possible the priority of victims’ treatment based on the severity of their condition, and to move patients away from the incident towards resources that offer comprehensive care. The article also presents the implementation of an existing solution entitled IN-SIDER which was modified according to the CWA18004:2023 ‘Requirements for acquiring digital information from victims during Search and Rescue operations’ [9] providing specifications for digital victim tracking systems and part of the solution is the triage of the victims after a mass casualty incident during a Search and Rescue operation. This will assist first responders to prioritise the rescue mission and boost awareness of first responders during emergency operations.

Implementation of Pre-standardisation Activities

The following two standardisation activities aimed at enhancing interoperability in crisis management area were validated through extended FSX carried out as part of STRATEGY project on the 30th March 2023 in Gualdo Tantino (Italy). This involved more than 200 participants including 65 victims (actors), 70 FRs from different agencies and more than 70 operational stakeholders and experts who participated in the command centre. The target group of the participants included STRATEGY partners and external experts such as:

• Crisis and disaster management practitioners

• First Responders

• Standardisation experts

• Civil protection agencies’ representatives

• Technical experts

• Industry representatives

Scenarios (i.e. virtual scenarios that are used for training purposes) used for the FSX comprised of Scenario A which focused on an earthquake hazard occurring in the area causing the partial collapse of a dam element and Scenario B focused on a wildland-urban interface fire. The FSX involved parallel events derived from the two scenarios that were occurring in Italy territory. The event was presented in inject-type format with a total of 82 injects which were incorporated into the TMT execution manager.

Digital Scenario Specifications for Crisis Management Exercises

The standardisation item aims at specifying a digital process for the planning of crisis management exercises. This will involve providing recommendations on the type of digital information exchanged for scenarios in the crisis management area and the use of a common data model for exchanging scenario characteristics. Main target groups are organisations responsible for planning and implementation of exercises, and particularly local, regional, national and international emergency management authorities, exercise planning teams, trainers and first responders. The FSX activities initially involved a roundtable with the participation of various stakeholders from different organisations. A presentation of the proposed data model and a demonstration of the TMT execution manager was carried out, followed by a discussion focused on the evaluation of the CWA18019:2023 content for providing feedback. An example with respect to scenario planning as well as a short demonstration of the TMT execution manager was also provided to participants, offering a better understanding of the proposed pre-standardisation activity and leading to fruitful discussions and collection of feedback by participants. The actual FSX then took place during which the content of the proposed CWA18019:2023 was put into practice incorporating two FSX scenarios which involved a large number of actors, events and injects (see Fig. 2.1). The execution of the virtual scenario was carried out by the TMT while certain injects that contained alarm messages were published to the message broker provided by the Driver+ framework [6] and then received by a Command and Control (C2) system (see Fig. 2.2).

Fig. 2.1

Scenario injects and events generated during the TTX using the TMT application for the two FSX scenarios demonstrating the applicability of the proposed data model

Fig. 2.2

View of the FSX control room with TMT generating injects containing alarm messages (bottom screen), published to the message broker provided by the D+ framework and then received and presented by the C2 system (top left screen)

Digital Victim Tracking System for Mass Casualty Incidents

The proposed CWA18004:2023 was tested in the FSX in the scenario of mass casualty incident where 65 victims and first responders from different agencies were involved. In total, 70 triage tags were used (i.e. 20 digital victim tracking tags and 50 paper-based with a QR code) and 370 transactions conducted between the tags and the mobile applications. All the tags are scanned by the same mobile application by the first responders in three phases (i.e. primary triage, secondary triage and before dispatching to hospitals or after a major update identified). The progress of the operation was available on the main platform IN-SIDER, shown in Fig. 2.3, in real time shared with a C2 system and covered the whole part of the Scenario A. Figure 2.4 also presents actual First Responders using the mobile application to triage and track victims during the FSX.

Fig. 2.3

IN-SIDER platform with the overall information after the end of the mission

Fig. 2.4

First responders in actions during the FSX evaluation

Evaluation of Pre-standardisation Activities

The evaluation for both standardisation activities conducted for Search and Rescue and Training is mainly based on three pillars (TTX evaluation, FSX evaluation and comments received through the public commenting period). The evaluation performed during the TTX is dedicated to Search and Rescue conducted 23rd of June 2022 and for the Training conducted 22nd of June 2022. For the commenting period, in total received 36 comments which improved the final versions of the pre-standardisation activity. The final evaluation was performed during the FSX week in March 2023 (27-31/3/2023). The FSX aimed to showcase all integrated systems and methodologies of the different pre-standardisation items, and evaluate the concepts of the CWAs in realistic operational conditions and assets and actors (FRs, Emergency Management Centres, Crisis Management Response teams) across different threat scenarios. Both activities participated in the FSX with the two standardisation items entitled ‘Specifications for Digital Scenarios for Crisis Managements’ and ‘Requirements for acquiring digital information from victims during Search and Rescue operations’.

Both CWAs involvement in the FSX week took place in two phases. Firstly, during the first dates with two slots of 4 hours each dedicated to present the current status of the CWAs documents, a demonstration of potential solutions adapted to the propositions of the CWAs and an open discussion based on the end-user questions. In the end of the discussions, a questionnaire was shared among the participants to provide input. The following Figs. 2.5 and 2.6 present the feedback collected by crisis management stakeholders for both CWAs respectively.

Fig. 2.5

Scores’ distribution obtained for all the statements of CWA: ‘Specifications for Digital Scenarios for Crisis Management Exercises’

Fig. 2.6

Scores’ distribution obtained for all the statements of CWA: ‘Requirements for acquiring digital information from victims during Search and Rescue operations’

The obtained results for CWA 18019:2023 and CWA 18004:2023 indicate an overall score ranging from 3.8 to 4.4 (out of 5) and 4.1 to 4.7 (out of 5) with average scores of 4.1 and 4.2 respectively, which highlights that the participants evaluated satisfactorily the CWA activities and rated them as promising and well-structured.

Secondly on 30/3/2023 leading the first part and large part of the 2nd scenario of the exercise providing a solution to triage and track victims after a mass casualty incident and a digital scenario builder. Indicatively Figs. 2.7 and 2.8 are available for large-scale acceptance from the operational stakeholder participating either as players or as observers.

Fig. 2.7

FSX participant responses on ‘How do you rate the methodology adopted for running the FSX, using an IT infrastructure for supporting the exercise and the interaction among the participants?’

Fig. 2.8

FSX participant responses on ‘How do you rate the scenarios used during the FSX? Do you think it helped to achieve the objective of the exercise?’

Conclusions

The technical and validation activities of STRATEGY project were concluded with the FSX which provided the basis to demonstrate how the proposed pre-standardisation activities of Stream 1 ‘Search and Rescue’ and Stream 7 ‘Training’ could be integrated and implemented within specific technical tools, demonstrating their practical application and opening up future opportunities for exploitation. Meanwhile, the development of the CWAs was enriched by the experiences and feedback of all involved external participants and experienced partners and submitted for publication on May 2023 at CEN/CENELEC and both accepted while receiving the unique numbers below. CWA 18019:2023 ‘Specifications for Digital Scenarios for Crisis Management Exercises’ and CWA18004:2023 ‘Requirements for acquiring digital information from victims during Search and Rescue operations’.