CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – U.S. Naval War College participated in a new educational simulation that was unveiled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Urban Risk Lab, located in their Department of Architecture and Urbanism, March 21.
The “Civilian-Military Humanitarian Response Simulation” was a notional post-category five hurricane scenario that leveraged the expertise of three NWC faculty – Hank Brightman, Tony Fox and David Polatty, all professors from the College of Operational and Strategic Leadership (COSL) – who served as facilitators and adjudicators for the event.
The simulation sought to provide MIT graduate students with a deeper understanding of military participation in disaster response at the operational level, and the complexities that the response presents.
“NWC president Rear Adm. [Jeffrey] Harley has challenged NWC faculty to ‘operationalize, navalize and futurize’ the college,” said Polatty. “We can’t think of a more innovative or meaningful way to do that with respect to humanitarian operations than engaging with current and future leaders in the humanitarian space.
“Working with MIT faculty and students within their Urban Risk Lab and Humanitarian Response Lab will help to better prepare the international humanitarian system and U.S. Navy for complex humanitarian operations in the future, whether in a conflict or natural disaster setting.”
The three-hour, four-move simulation included a large-scale floor map featuring Central American geography; realistic physical ship models of U.S. Navy platforms; and highly detailed, storm-impacted regions.
Several doctoral students from MIT have been coordinating with NWC’s Operational Level Programs faculty for nearly a year on civilian-military humanitarian logistics and urbanization challenges and opportunities.
“Participating in this activity gave me a much greater appreciation for just how complicated the military aspect of humanitarian response is – especially given competing objectives, limited resources, and the need to support the host nation’s requirements,” said Lily Bui, a student who served as commander of the notional "Caribbean Task Force."
The simulation is one of several follow-on actions stemming from NWC’s Civilian-Military Humanitarian Response Workshop held in Newport, Rhode Island in October.
That workshop featured an Urbanization and Climate Change Working Group comprised of key stakeholders from the humanitarian assistance arena, ranging from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to prominent international bodies and U.S. government agencies and non-governmental organizations.
One of the recommendations of the working group was better and more robust simulations and exercises which could be explored along with frameworks and processes in the safety of an academic environment, which led to the planning and implemention of this event.