Major Exercise by EU FloodCommand Rehearses Pan-European Response to Massive Coastal Flooding

LONDON, April 13/PRNewswire/ -- A major international exercise using advanced new technology to help
European nations improve their response to massive coastal flooding was held
throughout Europe last week. Emergency command centres in the UK, Sweden,
Holland and Ireland worked together to coordinate a joined-up response to
flooding from a simulated tsunami in another EU member state. The exercise
was of particular relevance in the light of the major tidal surge that nearly
overwhelmed flood defences in the eastern United Kingdom, Germany and Holland
in November 2007, and the growing threat from rising sea levels caused by
climate change.

The EU FloodCommand programme, co-funded by the European Commission, is a
project run by emergency training and technology company VectorCommand. It
was set up to improve pan-European cooperation in the event of major coastal
flooding emergencies such as tidal surges and tsunamis.

The exercise conducted last week explored how emergency services and
governments of European nations could best coordinate their resources to help
a fellow European nation deal with the results of a massive tsunami.

Senior personnel from coast guard and emergency management organisations
and government departments in the UK, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands,
along with representatives from nine other countries, all participated in the
exercise, working from command centres in their home countries as well as in
the simulated recipient nation command centre.

The complex issues of how to offer and prepare emergency response forces
such as helicopters and boats, transport them to the recipient nation, and
deploy and coordinate them in the recipient nation, were all explored during
the exercise, with VectorCommand's Command Support System being used to
improve communications and integrate all aspects of resource command and
control.

Rod Stafford, the project chairman, said: 'The challenge of maintaining
high levels of data exchange over diverse networks across multiple national
boundaries was amply illustrated during the exercise, but the system's
resilience to variable communications networks ensured that no data was lost
and enabled operations to continue at a high tempo.

'Valuable lessons were learned by all participants in the exercise, and
these lessons will be incorporated into future pan-European emergency
planning.

'The Command Support System proved itself able to support the
coordination of multilateral, multi-agency operations while overcoming the
challenges of interoperability traditionally associated with such
interventions.'

Source: VectorCommand Ltd

For further information contact: Stephen Prendergast, pressoffice@eufloodcommand.eu, Tel: +44(0)2392-410400, http://www.eufloodcommand.eu

2008-04-13 06:01:59 0334240 PRNEWSWIRE