Canadian Embassy - Tokyo, Japan
Challenge
Situated on two major fault lines, the Tokyo Metropolitan area is highly susceptible to earthquake damage. Like all government and private sector organizations in Japan, the Canadian Embassy was concerned with planning for the potential impact of a large scale seismic event on the Japanese capital.
Action
- Optimum collaborated with the Embassy’s Emergency Response Team to create a realistic simulation that would fully test the embassy’s ability to respond to a large scale crisis. Business continuity was a key focus of an exercise that was meant to simulate an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale.
- An eight-hour simulation exercise was designed in which all embassy staff and a number of outside volunteers were faced with a series of scripted, but realistic, situations.
- Embassy operations were shut down for a day and approximately 200 embassy staff fully participated in the simulation exercise. Since the emphasis was on effective communication, the exercise included detailed news reports which were created to illustrate the evolution of the event throughout the day. The “reports” also helped determine the ability of the embassy’s media and communication personnel to respond to a series of challenging situations that required an immediate response in multiple languages (English/French/Japanese).
- Communication, consular and management staff were also tested with simulated calls and actors arriving with challenges to be resolved throughout the day.
- The Tokyo Metropolitan Fire Department was engaged in the exercise to test the embassy’s ability to coordinate with outside agencies in the event of a crisis and to add realism to the simulation.
Outcome
The consensus among Embassy staff was that the simulation was an effective learning exercise that thoroughly tested the embassy’s emergency response protocols. Outside observers were brought in from the British Embassy in Tokyo as well as other relevant agencies. Department heads all agreed that the simulation helped to identify several areas in which their emergency plans needed to be reviewed, and they have used this information to begin developing new protocols.
