Bio-Agro Defense Collaboration: The Need of Joint Leadership Education and Training of Strategic Analysts and Decision Makers

Abstract

Bioweapons deliberately spread to humans and animals is one of the most complex and intersectoral CBRNE threats. It requires multi-sectoral collaboration between law enforcement, public and animal health and in severe cases civil-military collaboration. By building a collaborative management culture between these sectors, through joint education, training and exercise activities, better methods and tools will be obtained in order to reach interoperability and an integrated preparedness approach. Lessons learned and experiences from previous projects, courses, workshops, and simulation exercises require a rationale knowledge transfer. Horison scanning is one example of a method that can be recommended to educate strategic analysts jointly from various sectors and the “Decision Theater” is a dynamic and flexible tool that is useful to train decision makers to examine complex bio-agro defense and biosecurity problems.