Disaster Resilience and Recovery
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Exercises test plans, people and systems before a real disaster does. They range from discussion-based tabletop exercises to functional exercises and full-scale drills, and increasingly combine hazards, sectors and borders. This page sets out how exercises are designed, run and evaluated, why lessons are often identified but not learned, and what evidence serves the authorities that commission and run them.
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Disaster exercises are planned simulations that test plans, people and systems before a real disaster does, from tabletop discussions to functional exercises and full-scale drills. Multi-hazard exercises combine hazards, sectors and borders. Lessons count only when plans, training and resources change afterwards and the changes are tracked.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Multi hazard exercises · Province C · Monsoon season
| Cash to at-risk households | 72 h | 44 | Yes |
| Livestock evacuation | 48 h | 19 | Partial |
| Shelter kits | 72 h | 23 | Yes |
Scenario design and learning. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
An exercise tests only what its scenario stresses. Scenarios built around familiar single hazards leave untested the compound and cascading events that cause the greatest difficulty.
Tabletop exercises surface assumptions about roles, resources and timing that differ between agencies. Many problems appear before any resource moves.
Functional and full-scale exercises move information, people and equipment, exposing bottlenecks in communication, logistics and decision-making that discussion misses.
After-action reviews identify improvements, but lessons are learned only when plans, training and resources change. Without tracking, the same findings recur in the next exercise.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Tabletop exercise | A discussion-based exercise in which participants talk through decisions in response to a scenario. |
| Full-scale exercise | An exercise that deploys people and equipment in the field under realistic conditions. |
| After-action review | A structured review after an exercise or event that records what happened and what should change. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exercises held | count by type and hazard | annual | Exercise programme records | REPORTED |
| Multi-agency participation | count of organizations taking part | per exercise | Exercise records | REPORTED |
| Exercise objectives met | percent of objectives | per exercise | Evaluation reports | REPORTED |
| Improvement actions completed | percent of actions closed on time | quarterly | Action tracking | REPORTED |
| Repeat findings | count of findings recorded in earlier exercises | per exercise | After-action reviews | REPORTED |
| Exercises with compound or cascading scenarios | percent of exercises | annual | Exercise programme records | REPORTED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| UNDRR guidance on scenario-based exercises | Design guidance for preparedness exercises | Public, UN terms of use |
| WHO simulation exercise manual | Methods for planning, conducting and evaluating simulation exercises | Public, WHO terms of use |
| US Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) | Exercise design and evaluation doctrine | Public domain, US government |
| EU Civil Protection Mechanism exercise reports | Multinational exercise programmes and lessons | Public, EU terms of use |
| INSARAG guidelines and exercises | International urban search and rescue standards and exercise practice | Public, UN terms of use |
Disaster Resilience and Recovery prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| National disaster management authorities | Which scenarios and agencies the exercise programme should cover | Programme records; repeat findings |
| Exercise sponsors in ministries and agencies | Which objectives an exercise must test | Evaluation frameworks; previous findings |
| Heads of participating organizations | Which improvement actions to fund and when | After-action reviews; action tracking |
Exercise designers and evaluators work on a demanding set of questions.
Plans describe intended behaviour; exercises show actual behaviour. Discussion-based exercises walk participants through a scenario and expose gaps in understanding and authority. Functional and full-scale exercises test systems and people under time pressure. Multi-hazard scenarios, such as a flood that cuts power during a heatwave, reveal dependencies between agencies and infrastructure that are invisible when each plans alone.
The value of an exercise lies in what changes afterwards. Lessons identified are not lessons learned until plans, training or resources change and the change is tested again. Exercise programmes that focus on demonstration rather than discovery, or that avoid exposing failures, produce reassurance without improvement.
Building plausible, challenging scenarios with decision analysis and hazard science from Earth and geophysical science and hydrology. Scenarios can be anchored too closely on past events.
Trained evaluators record decisions and timing against objectives. Observer bias and participant awareness affect results.
Structured debriefs that identify causes, not blame. Candour depends on a safe environment.
Recording lessons and verifying implementation. Tracking often lapses between exercises.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.