Humanitarian Crisis Simulation

This short course is designed to enable participating students to weigh and apply humanitarian principles, concepts, best practices, and minimum standards to a simulated humanitarian emergency. The simulation exercise challenges student participants with issues and dilemmas confronting humanitarian practitioners face when responding to a complex emergency, and inspires them to work within the humanitarian system and architecture to solve problems in creative ways. In their roles as staff of humanitarian response agencies charged with responding to a large-scale crisis, student participants will analyze a dynamic stream of assessment data, prioritize key humanitarian needs, and make critical decisions about the appropriate type and scale of needed interventions. Participants will also be introduced to the importance and mechanisms of international humanitarian coordination in assembling the response. The simulation will include a day-long exercise followed by a day of debriefing, analysis, and identification of key challenges and lessons. The Humanitarian Crisis Simulation focuses on humanitarian operations from the perspective of humanitarian assistance agencies operating in the field. The course should likely, therefore, be of interest to those wishing to work with humanitarian agencies responsible for planning and conducting responses to vulnerable populations affected by disaster, or to those who want to better understand the humanitarian assistance system and the challenges confronting humanitarian decision-makers.