Centre for Applied Disaster and Emergency Management

Through education, knowledge transfer and outreach, CADEM continues to work closely with key Emergency Management stakeholders to grow the Centre and its mandate. CADEM's Advisory Council ensures all programming adheres to relevant regulations, standards, and protocols, and reflects the needs of industry, government, and professional bodies to improve individual, organizational, and community resilience. CADEM uses the Incident Command System of training to ensure our course material is relevant, up-to-date, and highly effective.

Training exercises provide an opportunity to test plans and processes in a learning-focused environment. Leveraging CADEM’s Emergency Coordination Centre Simulation Lab and faculty expertise, CADEM is uniquely positioned to design, facilitate, and evaluate training exercises to ensure client compliance with professional body requirements and provincial and federal regulations. CADEM supports the spectrum of discussion-based and operation-based exercises using full simulation in our Lab, in classroom settings on Campus, and through custom exercise delivery at the client’s site. CADEM follows the industry-leading Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) for the development, facilitation, and evaluation of its exercises. All exercises include a full debrief with participants.

Tabletop Exercises (TTX)

A TTX is typically held in an informal setting intended to generate discussion of various issues regarding a hypothetical, simulated emergency. TTXs can be used to enhance general awareness, validate plans and procedures, rehearse concepts, and/or assess the types of systems needed to guide the prevention of, protection from, mitigation of, response to, and recovery from a defined incident. Generally, TTXs are aimed at facilitating conceptual understanding, identifying strengths and areas for improvement, and/or achieving changes in attitudes.

Games

A game is a simulation of operations that often involves two or more teams, usually in a competitive environment, using rules, data, and procedures designed to depict an actual or hypothetic situation. Games explore the consequences of player decisions and actions and are therefore excellent tools to use when validating or reinforcing plans and procedures or evaluating resource requirements.

Functional Exercises

Functional exercises are designed to validate and evaluate capabilities, multiple functions and/or sub-functions, or interdependent groups of functions. Functional exercises are typically focused on exercising plans, policies, procedures, and staff members involved in management, direction, command, and control functions. In functional exercises, events are projected through an exercise scenario with event updates that drive activity at the management level. A functional exercise is conducted in a realistic, real-time environment; however, movement of personnel and equipment is usually simulated.

Meeting Regulatory Requirements

CADEM’s team works directly with clients to ensure that all of our exercises are designed to meet regulatory requirements applicable to each client’s unique situation. CADEM will also provide a lessons-identified report delivered to the client upon request.

To arrange a consultation, please contact CADEM@nait.ca.

CADEM specializes in advancing the disaster and emergency management profession through collaboration, networking, and training. In addition to our education, training, and exercise offerings, we are proud to host annual events and conferences to bring together the emergency management community and promote best-practices and continuous learning.

CADEM has created a Facility Re-entry Guide that is available for download. The guide is designed to assist organizations with restarting their operations amid the COVID-19 challenge.

Download Facility Re-Entry Guide (pdf)

Emergency Management Stakeholder Summit

The Government of Alberta and NAIT’s Centre for Applied Disaster and Emergency Management (CADEM) were proud to host the 2020 Emergency Management Stakeholder Summit at NAIT’s Productivity and Innovation Centre.

The conference was a great success. This vital and popular networking opportunity provided emergency management partners with a platform to build and strengthen relationships and keep up to date with the latest trends in emergency and disaster management.

EPIC podcast provided an amazing review of the 2020 conference. Listen to the podcast:

Additionally, several speakers from the 2020 Emergency Management Stakeholder Summit (EMSS) have provided their presentations for download.

Download EMSS Speaker Presentations (zip)