The research team and I are currently on the home stretch with our analysis of the Cascadia Rising 2016 exercise, which tested the response capabilities of first responders in the Pacific Northwest to a magnitude 9+ earthquake and tsunami. The exercise involved about 23,000 participants from all levels of government in the region along with FEMA, private-sector companies, and non-governmental relief organizations. The insights garnered from the exercise were many and daunting. The exercise revealed that not only the region of impact but rather the nation as a whole would face a major challenge when this catastrophe becomes a reality. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the exercise will be repeated soon (2022), which will be informed from the lessons learned from the 2016 exercise and also operate under even more realistic assumptions and injects. Our study of CR16 focused on two major areas:

— (Shared) Situational Awareness and Common Operating Picture, and

— Managerial Challenges

For the first area, we were happy to have two papers accepted at two major international conferences, one of which even became a “best-paper nominee.” The papers and presentation slides of the first two papers on shared situational awareness (SSA) and the common operating picture (COP) can be found below:

ISCRAM Asia Pacific Conference (2018)

Scholl, H. J., Hubbel, K., & Leonard, J. (2018). Communications and Technology Challenges to Situational Awareness: Insights from the CR16 Exercise. In Proceedings of the 1st ISCRAM Asia-Pacific Conference (pp. 1-15). Wellington, NZ: ISCRAM. (Best paper nominee)

Paper | Presentation Slides (29.3 MB)

52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-52)

Scholl, H. J., Hubbell, K., & Leonard, J. G. (2019). Information Sharing and Situational Awareness: Insights from the Cascadia Rising Exercise of June 2016. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-52) (pp. 1-11). Maui, HI

Paper | Presentation Slides (19.2 MB)

Our paper on “Managerial Challenges” is currently under development.  We are planning to finish our analysis of the managerial challenges observed during the Cascadia Rising 2016 exercise by the end of March 2019. We will post the result also here.