Some outcomes of the project include: operational guidance, desktop and field exercises, advanced training for volatile HNS spills, experimental data on gas cloud fate, enhanced modelling capabilities through a brand-new fire and explosion modelling module, improved HNS database with new experimental data on evaporation/dissolution kinetics, and an exercise planning tool.
The MANIFESTS project is co-funded by the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism of the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) of the European Commission (call UCPM-2020-PP-AG – Prevention and preparedness for marine pollution at sea and on shore).
Manifest exercise tool
The MANIFESTS Exercise tool is one of the outcomes of the MANIFESTS Project Working Package 3: Application of response tools – in situ training and table top exercises and has been developed by CETMAR in collaboration with INTECMAR and with the technical advise of Centro Jovellanos.
The objective of the MANIFESTS tool is to strengthen training and exercise capacities of response organisations by providing knowledge, guidance and resources to prepare, develop and evaluate marine pollution response exercises. It will also facilitate the creation of an exercise programme, enabling replication, lessons learning and collaboration with other organisations.
The exercise tool consists of four functionalities:
- Basic principles of exercising, a section describing the fundamentals of this topic and other support information based on a desktop study. It includes definition of terms, exercise typology and classifications proposed by relevant organizations in the field of marine pollution. It also contains checklists, templates and examples of the documents required for formulating different types of exercises, as well as links to reference manuals and relevant information on HNS.
- The Exercises database, an online user-friendly repository providing easy access to data and information from more than 150 exercises of various levels of complexity, types, geographical scope and to the associated documentation, including guides, reports, multimedia resources, etc. Resources included in this database were carefully extracted from international, EU and national organisations working in the field of maritime pollution and chemical spills. This database is built upon the MARINER Knowledge Tool (MARINER project, 2016), an extensive database which identified existing knowledge and resources related to HNS. It allows users to search for relevant knowledge and resources by major HNS themes, organisations, projects, type of output/resource, and funding source. This Knowledge tool has been renamed as MARINER-MANIFESTS Knowledge tool, as it has been updated with new contents in the frame of the MANIFESTS project.
- An Agenda, in which users can plan their programme of exercises and the different phases of preparation, execution and evaluation, and create customized alerts for each task.
- The Exercise Tool, where the user can select the actions to be tested for each phase of the exercise, and the system will produce customised documentation that includes checklists, formularies for injects, briefing and debriefing reports, and evaluation forms that can be downloaded.
Two modalities of use
The MANIFESTS Exercise Tool can be used following two modalities:
The first modality allows users to store their files in the CETMAR server.
The second modality allows users to migrate the tool to their organisation server, and store their data in them.
If you are interested in setting-up the tool in your local server, you should contact manifeststool@cetmar.org.
User Types and Permissions
The MANIFESTS Exercise Tool offers users the possibility of registering or not registering in the site.
Registered users will be able to create a programme of exercises in the agenda, set-up alarms that will be received by email, develop new exercises using the online tool, and save their data so they can retrieve it to create new exercises. Besides, they will be able to upload, save and edit data and documentation.
Unregistered users will be able to use all functionalities of the tool and download reports created during the session, however their data will be deleted within the next 24 hours.
The following table summarises the users’ permissions: