Challenge
Provide digital tools and support for a multinational scenario exercise, sponsored by NATO, that rapidly evolves into a severe crisis.
Solution
The exercise was conducted using 4C’s Exercise Manager software and supported remotely by our experienced consultants.
Benefits
The exercise could be easily planned and set up, exercise direction could be changed at on the fly, observations could be logged in real-time, and generating reports for analysis was automated, saving valuable time and resources.
Customer
Yonsei University is a leading academic institution located in Seoul, South Korea, with over 40,000 students and approximately 3,000 faculty staff. It is renowned for its cutting-edge research in fields such as biotechnology, engineering, and medical sciences, among other things.
Multi-national scenario exercise spanning Asia Pacific region
The Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University is at the forefront of research into international affairs in the Asia–Pacific Region. Through its collaboration with Keio University, Japan, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Deakin University, Australia, they wanted to run a real-world scenario exercise that they could use as part of their research.
The scenario was developed by several professors at Yonsei University to reflect the growing instability in the world, with the support of 4C consultants to ensure everything would run smoothly. 4C’s Exercise Manager software – which includes templated fields to simplify exercise and inject setup – was used to plan and execute the exercise according to a strict timeline.
Multi-national scenario exercise spanning Asia Pacific region
The Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University is at the forefront of research into international affairs in the Asia–Pacific Region. Through its collaboration with Keio University, Japan, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Deakin University, Australia, they wanted to run a real-world scenario exercise that they could use as part of their research.
The scenario was developed by several professors at Yonsei University to reflect the growing instability in the world, with the support of 4C consultants to ensure everything would run smoothly. 4C’s Exercise Manager software – which includes templated fields to simplify exercise and inject setup – was used to plan and execute the exercise according to a strict timeline
Flexible software supports dynamic exercise
“With four organizations in different countries taking part in the exercise, we wanted to recreate a lifelike situation,” explains Richard White, 4C Training & Exercising Consultant. “Therefore, as well as the main scenario workspace in the software, the exercise included digital breakout rooms for each country which participants could easily jump between if needed. That meant there were multiple touchpoints for us to monitor, support and gather data from.”
The exercise consisted of a series of 30-minute sessions that gradually increased the severity of the scenario as it evolved throughout the day. In total, 46 different events were injected into the scenario over a four-hour period, each altering the course of the scenario and forcing participants to collaborate, make fast impactful decisions, and react to the consequences as they unfolded.
Not surprisingly, this generated a significant amount of valuable data. However, analysing such data can be laborious if it isn’t logged and aggregated properly to facilitate analysis. Exercise Manager handles this process seamlessly, allowing observers to log data and comments tagged to events and objectives in real-time. The system also tracks participants’ actions, decisions, and other key parameters captured during the exercise.
Powerful analysis and reporting tools
“We have achieved considerable benefits since we started using Exonaut,” he continues. “Incident reporting times have been halved, which obviously gives our team much more time to focus on security activities. Heat maps visualize where most incidents occur. Previously, we were making educated guesses, but with Exonaut we have the facts from over 100 touchpoints to back it up and can be more proactive in our security activities. In fact, based on the data from Incident Manager, we have been able to use our resources more efficiently and increase our presence with surveillance actions and other safety and security precautions in areas and at times where it’s most needed.”
Efficiency gains: faster decision-making
“As well as facilitating the running of the exercise, Exercise Manager has powerful reporting capabilities that provide considerable time savings for users,” continues White. “Generating exercise reports is a fast and pain-free process. Data is presented in intuitive formats making it easy to get a quick overview of the exercise and make initial assumptions and analyses, while raw data remains available for further processing. Using the AI tool, you can ask data or system related questions and get answers fast, summarize reports, or generate instant insights. It’s capabilities like this which make the software standout from standard office and communications platforms, that can’t deliver exercise management, reporting and analysis in one.”
With the exercise completed and the reports available, the professors at Yonsei and peer universities can continue their research and present findings and recommendations to their respective governments and NATO on proactive international collaboration and contingency planning in light of the evolving geopolitical situation.
Partnering with 4C Strategies
“We couldn’t have asked for better partners than 4C Strategies,” says Yonsei University Guest Professor Daryl Bockett. “. They were knowledgeable, professional, and unbelievably flexible in dealing with our program and they even delivered some services that we didn’t know to ask for. Their software was user-friendly and helped us gather valuable information for our research and for those who participated in the exercise. I’m looking forward to a long partnership with this amazing team!”
According to Nathan Bentley, 4C Solutions Consultant, “In today’s current climate, the need to increase resilience capabilities has never been more important. We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of exercises that we’ve been holding in the public and private sectors here in the Asia–Pacific Region and around the world. Organizations want to know they are better prepared and with our software and expert consultants, 4C is perfectly placed to help them with that.”
