Abstract: To increase the preparedness Crisis response and management authorities carry out various forms of exercises. This article is based upon a three year long project named Gaining security symbiosis (GSS). The project was aiming to increase the collaboration between crisis actors in the Swedish-Norway border region through exercises. We argue that creation of scenarios is a design challenge. In the GSS project, the exercises are built upon designed scenarios, which should make the exercise realistic and make the trainee train the expected. We propose a scenario design method that is built upon an iterative approach and that includes collaboration with the actors that are involved in the exercise. The method also includes a set of characteristics that could be used to evaluate the events of the scenario. The method have been developed and refined during the project and show some promising result. There is however a need for future research when it comes to further development and evaluation of the proposed design method.

Abstract: Emergency management situations are highly complex and require the collaboration of multiple parties for adequate responses to incidents. The design and validation of effective emergency response systems is critical in order to improve the overall effectiveness of teams tasked to manage emergency situations. We report ongoing work whose objective is to increase the efficiency of emergency response solutions through iterative cycles of human in-the-loop simulation, modeling, and adaptation. Ultimately, this cycle could either be achieved offline for complex adaptation (e.g., development of a novel interface), or online to provide timely and accurate decision support during an emergency management event. The method is made possible by achieving a high degree of realism and experimental control through the use of an innovative emergency management simulation platform called SYnRGY.,Emergency Management, Emergency Response Systems, Simulation, System Design, Validation.

Abstract: Protecting critical infrastructures (CIs) against external and internal risks in an increasingly uncertain environment is a major challenge. In this paper we present a generic multi-stage scenario construction approach that is applicable to a wide range of decision problems in the field of CI protection. Our approach combines scenario construction and decision support, whereby we explicitly consider the performance of decision options which have been determined for a set of initial scenarios. Because of the iterative character of our approach, consequences of decision options and information updates are evolutionary processed towards advanced scenarios. By disturbing vulnerable or critical parts of CIs, cascading effects between interrelated CIs and the responses to the decision options can be determined. We apply this scenario-construction technique to two civil security research projects. One focuses on protecting food supply chains against disruptions, whereas the other aims at securing public railway transport against terrorist attacks.