Exercise TEMPEST Series

The main obective os this exercises was to enhance understanding of the public health aspects of maritime chemical incident management, including planning and preparedness (detection and identification), response and recovery. Exercise Tempest 1 objectives were: to examine the detection of maritime chemical incidents of public health concern, to test local / national chemical incident plans, and emergency operating procedures and adherence to standards, to test the alerting cascade, to test channels of communication between key stakeholders, to explore access to key health, environmental and meteorological data. Exercise Tempest 2 objectives were:
to examine the establishment of incident control zones, to explore the public health response and activation process, to test command and control structures during response to a maritime incident of public
health concern, to undertake a dynamic risk assessment, to manage the incident in terms of short, medium and long term health outcomes.
Exercise Tempest 3 objectives were: to examine communication of public messages to affected communities using different
mechanisms such as websites, the media, and social networking, to explore the establishment of public health monitoring registers, to explore post-incident public advice and support networks, to undertake public health investigations.