Engaging civil society in CBRNe field training exercises: the PROACTIVE approach

Abstract

While the inclusion of societal stakeholders in disaster preparedness and risk reduction activities, such as field training exercises, is highly encouraged, rarely is it put into practice. Instead, common practice to add realism to field training exercises appears to be to use off-duty first responders, actors, or mannequins as role play victims and to invite fellow practitioners to be exercise observers. The PROACTIVE project co-organised three CBRNe field training exercises, each in a different country, whereby the public at large, including vulnerable groups, volunteered to role play victims and representatives of civil society organisations took on the role of observer. Through social science and humanities (SSH) mixed methods, this paper aims to better unearth the new perspectives brought by such societal stakeholder engagement. We found that regardless of vulnerability or of culture, societal stakeholders’ perspectives demonstrated the importance of human factors in CBRNe response, such as responder communication and empathy, brought issues of accessibility to the forefront and that involvement in such preparedness activities appears to increase disaster preparedness.