Inter-Institutional Crisis Task Force

The «Crisis Task Force» concept is the main International novelty in managing large contingencies. This entails establishing an Operations Group to take immediate action formed by different agencies or services that pool their resources to increase response capacity.

This concept is used by the UN to deal with famines that arise in Africa, and by nature conservation agencies to deal with environmental disasters. It is also starting to be used by emergency services across the world. With the aim of testing this concept in Spain, the first joint interservice cooperation exercise took place in Seville in April 2009: the “Crisis Task Force”.

If you have experience in dealing with emergencies and would like to take part in the international Crisis Task Force exercise module, please inform our International Office at internacional@samu.es. The international module lasts for 2 more days (6 in all) and the participants have a full-time instructor.

Description of the exercise

1. Definition

Exercise in the Management of a natural disaster for the development of organisational, assistance and logistic skills.

Targeted particularly at strengthening individual resistance, managing uncertainty, stress and the capacity to deal with environmental disorganisation.

It is a test in resistance and self-control in a deliberately complex and aggressive scenario.

2. Concept

The CTF is an ACADEMIC EXERCISE that forms part of the University of Seville’s Master’s Degree in Emergencies, Disasters and Humanitarian Action and so all the operational developments will be supervised by the Academic Authority of that learning process.

It will take place in a scenario that resembles a real situation, making it necessary to perform an uninterrupted intervention consisting of rescue, salvage, assistance and psycho-social care services for a period of 60 hours.

2. Organisation

It will be based on the Incident, ComandSystem (ICS) model, in both the planning and execution phases, modifying the actors for teaching purposes.