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Exercise Rū Whenua Newsletter
December 2023
Welcome to the December issue of the Exercise Rū Whenua 2024 update newsletter!
Wishing you all a safe and relaxing holiday season!
Remember the dates!
The exercise will be held over three days:
• 12 June 2024: Phase 1 - Initial impact (functional exercise)
• 26 June 2024: Phase 2 - Sustained response (tabletop exercise)
• 10 July 2024: Phase 3 - Transition to recovery (tabletop exercise)
National Exercise Programme Objectives
Exercise Rū Whenua is part of the National Exercise Programme (NEP). The NEP builds capability across government through a coordinated series of interagency readiness activities, measured against a set of national objectives. Capability is also built through the capture and sharing of lessons identified from previous events and exercises.
Exercise Rū Whenua will seek to meet the following NEP objectives:
● Lead a coordinated interagency response to a significant incident or emerging threat that warrants an NSS activation.
● Support a coordinated interagency response to a significant incident or emerging threat that warrants an ODESC System activation (for support agencies only).
● Enable high level all-of-government decision making through the ODESC System.
● Integrate recovery planning and arrangements into the response.
● Situational awareness is established and maintained during the exercise.
● Manage and deliver public information management to establish and maintain public assurance and confidence in the response.
● Integrate previous lessons identified from interagency activities to engender a culture of continuous improvement.
The Exercise is also a Tier 4 (national) exercise on the CDEM National Exercise Programme and as such, will also be involving all regional CDEM Groups.
Planning workshops underway
This month NEMA led two very successful Exercise Rū Whenua planning workshops with representatives from CDEM Groups and over 25 national agencies to introduce them to the exercise concept, the Alpine Fault scenario, and initiate shared discussions on roles, responsibilities and exercise preparations. Further workshops are planned for early March 2024 to continue to support exercise development.
Exercise writing tips
A structured approach to exercise development and writing is important in this type of large, multi-agency exercise. Download the CDEM Exercises, Director's Guideline for Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups [DGL 010/19] for information about providing a common approach to exercise planning.
A suite of exercise development templates is also available for you to use to support your exercise development. Download them here.
Check out our webpage
If you haven't already seen it, the Exercise Rū Whenua Warning Order is now available on the NEMA webpage.
As other exercise documentation and material is developed it will be available on our website, so add the page to your favourites and check back regularly!
