Academia comes to life in EOC workshop

January 15, 2011

When a 7.1 magnitude earthquake occurred in Canterbury on September 4th 2010, the University of Canterbury’s emergency operations centre (EOC) was activated to manage the University’s response, Although the EOC is primarily for this purpose, only a few months later the facility is again in operation, this time to support post graduate students from the University of Canterbury who were acting as disaster coordinators during a major simulated storm exercise.

The students were provided with an orientation into the use of an Emergency Operations Centre as part of their ongoing research projects and being able to provide facilitate this in a dedicated operations centre made the experience much more realistic. The workshop was led by Mercalli Director Steve Glassey, who has worked internationally in operations centres, including with the United Nations in Lao PDR and closer to home in the National Crisis Management Centre.

In addition to introducing the practical processes of an EOC, Steve along with Dr Malcolm Shore (Adjunct Lecturer at University of Canterbury) discussed the relevance of current academic literature to EOC operations including the works of scholars: Quarantelli, Militello, Perry and Lutz. "It was a fascinating and very rewarding experience to introduce academic literature as part of the EOC course. Normally, EOC courses are very focused on process and structures with minimal use of underpinning literature to validate or challenge current practices. This workshop showed that academic literature can add significant value to student learning, providing the audience is appropriate" remarked Steve.

The two day workshop allowed students the ability to access notes and resources online.  When it came to "how to develop a situation report (SITREP)", students were broken into two groups and told to develop a SITREP in real-time for the current flooding in Toowoomba (QLD). "This novel and realistic exercise demonstrated the importance of analysing all available information including validation from multiple sources. Having these students work together to gather information on an actually unfolding disaster allowed for a much greater understanding the issues involved and provided a very positive learning experience" said Steve.

The workshop concluded with a two and half hour table top exercise, led by the University of Canterbury’s Primary Incident Controller Chris Hawker, who led the University's emergency response to the September quake. Following the course evaluation of how effective the experience was is to the students is collated and on this occasion is well stated by one student who commented "emergency management is not easy" which clearly demonstrated that the students gained a valuable insight into the reality of a major emergency response.

Mercalli Disaster Management was pleased to provide such a valuable experience for students interested in this new profession.

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