EU Modex is a simulation exercise promoting a well-coordinated joint response to disasters. A joint approach further helps to pool the expertise and capacities of first responders, avoids duplication of relief efforts, and ensures that assistance meets the needs of those affected. Pooling together civil protection capacities and capabilities allows for a stronger and more coherent collective response. The solution implementation is divided mainly into two steps:

1. Tabletop exercise. Tabletop exercises are sessions where team members meet to discuss the issues that exist during an emergency, their roles, and the different scenarios that could happen.
2. Field exercise, where the different scenarios are applied on the field and each entity plays its designed role.

Exercise scenario:

The scenario of the exercise was based on the premise of the occurrence of a major earthquake with its epicentre in the Vrancea area, Bucharest being severely affected. The most hard-hit areas included those located in the centre, North and East, where initial reports indicated more than 120 collapsed buildings and 200 others damaged, including central and local government premises, hospitals, and other public utility facilities. Fires and explosions occurred mainly in areas with collapsed and damaged buildings, which worsened the effects of the earthquake. To ensure the prerequisite conditions for the implementation of the National Concept of Post-Seismic Response, initial estimates were made in the aftermath of the earthquake, as follows: more than 400 casualties, more than 1,500 injured, several thousand missing persons and at least 30,000 people rendered homeless. The importance of the solution is that it helps in anticipating the needs of different organisations participating in the response activities to large-scale casualties. Then, it allows for involving large-scale resources at the international level (EU NATO, emergency organisations from multiple countries, international observers, civil society organisations, military units, and civilians).

Organization's willingness to participate in the exercise

The exercise is very costly, therefore organisations need to allocate resources and time to participate in the simulation. Also, they need to accept the fact that they may need to make some changes in their governing rules in order to better collaborate with other emergency organisations.

Organization’s sense of responsibility

A sense of responsibility is highly important so the members of the organisation are open to dedicating resources and time to prepare for something that will happen in the future.

Response capacities

For the exercise to be effective, it is important to consider the response capacities of the organisations involved in the exercise. Response capacities cover not only the resources available at the organisations but also how to utilise them. Moreover, response capacities mean being prepared with plans to handle a crisis when it occurs, and being ready to collaborate with others when needed.

Case Romania

The exercise was run in Romania (in the Vrancea area, Bucharest) in 2018. The exercise included many national organisations (Romanian) such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Ministry of National Defence, Ministry of Health; and some Non-governmental organisations and other entities such as the Romanian Red Cross, SMURD Foundation. Also, international organisations were part of the exercise such as the European Commission, through Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), and other organisations from Italy, Sweden, Norway, the UK, Germany, Israel, Austria, Slovakia, and Bulgaria. The scenario of the exercise was based on the premise of the occurrence of a major earthquake with its epicentre in the Vrancea area, Bucharest being severely affected. After the exercise, the final account of the effects of the major earthquake (including its two aftershocks) was as follows:

• 290.000 people were affected;
• 8413 wounded;
• 4467 dead;
• 934 missing;
• 50000 rendered homeless/displaced;
• 5240 affected buildings, of which 460 were destroyed, 1,700 severely damaged and 3080 uninhabitable;
• several public utility networks were damaged in Bucharest, including natural gas pipelines, power supply grids, and drinking water supply networks.

Lesson learned

• Knowing the resources, capabilities, and competencies of the participating organisations from the same country.
• Knowing how to enhance collaboration between international parties, sharing best practices, and assigning roles based on the governing rules of each country. For example in this exercise there was a collaboration between Hungarian and Romanian medical emergency services across the borders, accommodating one country’s practices in some situations and the other country in others.
• Anticipating new needs based on what happened during the exercise, for instance, the need for translators to speak with people who don’t know the official language.

Changes based on outcomes

• Change of some legislation, for example now civilian doctors could work in military hospitals in case of mass casualties, also, emergency services could use military airplanes to help civilians in a faster way, it used to take around 3 days to pass through all the permissions now it takes only 30 minutes.
• Initiating a new long term project called “Behavior change” which is concerned with the behavioral changes of emergency responders and civilians based on the exercises, it addresses something like why people don’t apply what they know about facing disasters, so how to move from the knowing phase to the acting phase.

• Administrative cooperation, it wasn’t straightforward to have a harmonized cooperation between all the participating parties, especially since each party has its own rules and legislation.
• This solution requires a very high cost to be implemented, so, it was hard to convince the participating organization to spend all this money to implement the exercise. The solution owners had to exert an effort to show that there’s a huge need to go through such an exercise.
• Not all the participating parties had the same interest and devotion to making the solution work.
• Talking about the exercise and the need to prepare for disasters scared people to an extent and made them think that the emergency responders know that something is going to happen, so solution owners had to deal with this fear.