Can we be prepared for the next accident or catastrophe? : Potential contributions of emergency collaboration exercises

Catastrophes and accidents (natural,technological, or man-made) have been subjected to scientific research from different disciplines and perspectives for a long time. Examples of these perspectives include community risk and vulnerability, human behaviour during crisis, fire behaviour and eco-system management, decision-making, communication, and collaboration issues. This paper deals with different perspectives of preparation and prevention in terms of accidents and catastrophes. The overall aim is to present an overview of different aspects on the possibility for organisations and societies to be prepared for the next incident and to highlight emergency exercises as a part of crisis management. In the second part of the paper the project “Collaboration exercises—from parallelto synchronous”, is introduced. The project is carried out in Sweden, and aims to explore how collaboration between police, ambulance and rescue services is practiced and developed during exercises. Of particular interest is inter-organisational collaboration and learning during exercises. To develop an understanding of these processes, a range of different types of emergency collaboration exercises was observed and participants were interviewed about their experiences. Tentative findings from the studies so far are briefly introduced. Some challenges of using exercises to increase the preparedness for managing the uncertainty and the unexpected are further discussed