In the context of civil protection exercises, well-considered and extensive evaluation plays a
crucial role in documenting best practices and shortcomings happening during those
exercises. By noting lessons learnt evaluation is essential for a constant improvement in
training efforts, thus promoting the capacities of response units in the European Union and its
neighboring countries for dealing with real disaster scenarios. INEGMA-E² is building upon an
upcoming approach of independent evaluation and aims for a new level of exercise
evaluation, which will meet high standards concerning documentation, replicability, and goal
orientation. The three pillars of the project are:
1.) The development of an adequate and versatile evaluation methodology, addressing the
different types of existing exercises. Each of those has different needs and goals, thus
requiring diverse evaluation approaches.
2.) Exploring the great number of existing tools, which can facilitate the data collection
throughout the exercise process. Software solutions and technical tools like databases and
handhelds empower the evaluators to collect a great amount of data even under difficult
circumstances often part of the training reality.
3.) The creation of an international pool of evaluators, which will be accessible by all
institutions managing those kinds of exercises, to ensure the availability of highly skilled
experts when needed. Those invited to this pool of evaluators will have to meet a certain skill
set developed during the project.
A strong interconnection of all three essential fields - methods, tools and network – is crucial
for setting new standards in exercise evaluation. By ensuring the provision of results for future
exercises INEGMA-E² will significantly contribute to a continuous improvement of exercise
outcomes. In addition, it will connect experts in exercise evaluation, will create a mechanism
to share knowledge and good practices and will be designed for further grow and scale up.