Emergency and Disaster Management Programme for Wartime Crises
1Summary
When a hospital loses power in an active conflict zone, or a rapid-response team has minutes to decide whether a route is safe, there is no time to consult a textbook. Wartime disasters compress the decision-making window that normally exists in a natural disaster, and add security threats, institutional breakdown, and humanitarian risk on top of it. The Emergency and Disaster Management Programme for Wartime Crises, delivered by the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy, is built around that compressed, high-pressure reality.
The programme equips participants with both the theoretical grounding and the field-level tools needed to manage disasters during armed conflict — from coordinating with civil defence, relief agencies, and health institutions, to building emergency response plans that hold up when security conditions are unstable and essential services are at risk of collapse.
2Objectives and target group
Who Should Attend?
- Civil defence, emergency, and relief personnel.
- Staff from health, interior, foreign affairs, and defence ministries.
- Members of rapid-response teams and crisis management units.
- Safety, security, and emergency officers in institutions and international organisations.
What You Will Be Able to Do:
- Build emergency response and evacuation plans that hold up under active armed-conflict conditions.
- Assess field risks quickly and lead rapid-response operations with incomplete information.
- Coordinate effectively between local institutions, civil defence, and international humanitarian agencies.
- Apply the humanitarian and legal frameworks that govern disaster response in wartime.
- Keep essential services and critical facilities running when security and infrastructure are under direct threat.
3Course Content
Module 1: Leading and Deciding Under Fire
- Qualities required of a leader operating in a war environment.
- Making rapid decisions under pressure and incomplete information.
- Working effectively within multidisciplinary emergency teams.
Module 2: Wartime Disasters vs Natural Disasters — Reading the Risk
- The concept of disaster in the context of war, and the phases of disaster management: preparedness, response, recovery.
- How risks from armed conflict differ from natural-disaster risk, including effects on infrastructure and legal complications.
- Risk analysis tools in hostile environments and gathering information under difficult field conditions.
Module 3: Planning, Evacuation and Field Logistics
- Preparing preventive, integrated emergency plans and mapping potential crisis scenarios.
- Managing logistics, medical, food, and psychological support in conflict zones.
- Safe evacuation techniques, securing transport routes, and managing temporary shelter centres.
Module 4: Protecting People and Critical Infrastructure
- Security threats facing emergency teams, and personal protection protocols, including around mines and unexploded ordnance.
- Keeping hospitals, shelters, energy, and water supplies operational under threat.
- Search and rescue in collapsed buildings, and working with international rescue teams.
Module 5: Health, Psychosocial Support and Humanitarian Law
- Field medical services, epidemic control, and managing field hospitals.
- Psychological needs in disaster environments, and supporting children and survivors.
- International agreements governing wartime, and the protection of civilians and medical facilities.
Module 6: Media, Partnerships and Technology in Crisis Response
- Factual crisis communication and countering rumours in conflict zones.
- Coordination mechanisms with the Red Crescent, Red Cross, the UN, and NGOs.
- Early-warning systems, sensing tools, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in disaster response.
Module 7: Keeping Institutions Running — Continuity, Funding and Oversight
- Maintaining administrative performance and managing human resources and sensitive data in crisis conditions.
- Local and international funding sources, and managing emergency budgets transparently.
- Performance indicators and field monitoring tools for evaluating the response as it happens.
Module 8: From Recovery to Readiness — Lessons and Institutional Capacity
- Planning the return to normalcy, damage assessment, and rehabilitating infrastructure and services.
- Documenting experience and building localised, future-facing response models.
- Ongoing training programmes and embedding disaster management into public policy.