CBRNE Ltd on Wednesday 16th November 2022 successfully completed the management of Project PROACTIVE’s second field exercise in Rieti, Italy in conjunction with the exercise host, Scuola Interforze per la Difesa NBC (Italian NBC School). The latter organisation is a partner of Horizon 2020 Project eNOTICE which provides venues for CBRNE exercises. Uniquely the exercise included 30 civilians including those with vulnerabilities. The Practioners included the Carabinieri, fire fighters, Italian Red Cross, practioners from the Sampling and Identification of Biological, Chemical, and Radiological Agents (SIBCRA) unit and the Italian army. The scenario surrounded the release of chlorine at an indoor train station. Italian Railway Employees immediately initiated evacuation measures, after which the Practitioners performed triage, sampling, detection and decontamination activities outside.
As the PROACTIVE exercise director of the Rieti exercise, CBRNE Ltd was the key point of contact with the NBC School ensuring each party’s tactical and strategic aims and objectives were mutually compatible and effective. CBRNE Ltd was also responsible for ensuring the Use Case Scenario played out by the hosts of the field exercise were applicable to the PROACTIVE evaluation criteria. The evaluation of the exercise was led by a team from the PROACTIVE partner UKHSA. Apart from the evaluators, 15 international PROACTIVE and eNOTICE observers from six different countries collected relevant observational data.
PROACTIVE and eNOTICE at NBC School following the post-exercise joint evaluation Workshop
PROACTIVE installed various security measures of ethics, health and safety, data protection and dignity to protect the involved civilians. As part of this, CBRNE Ltd was responsible for managing the multiple processes which included detailed briefings of all parties, transportation arrangements, the video and photography team, catering company and most importantly the handling of the personal possessions of the civilian volunteers throughout the wet decontamination phase. With the help of the University of Rome, Save the Children (Italy), CARITAS and local Rieti inhabitants, CBRNE Ltd also managed the recruitment and registration of volunteers in advance, ensuring their safe attendance during the exercise and coordinating their feedback to UKHSA via focus groups at the end of the exercise.
The PROACTIVE core-planning team at the Exercise Area after the successful exercise (Tony Godwin, Andreas Arnold, Nigel Hale, Danielle Carbon, Dominic Kelly, Irina Marsh)
Photographs and video content will be released soon. The evaluation and observational data can be found in the upcoming PROACTIVE Deliverable D6.4 which will be available on the project’s webpage (https://proactive-h2020.eu/). If you are interested in the previous exercise in Dortmund, please check out Deliverable D6.3 and the videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnSRDun5W3iaRRl8LAGXew).
