MULTI-DISCIPLINARY GROUPS

During the May 20, 1999 afternoon session of the TOPOFF Exercise Planning Conference, five multi-disciplinary groups were convened, each made up of members of the Local Emergency Management, State Emergency Management, Emergency Medical Services, Fire and HazMat, and Law Enforcement Groups. These multi-disciplinary groups reviewed and recommended objectives prepared by the Functional (single discipline) Groups during the morning session. Following their review, the Multi-Disciplinary Groups were tasked with achieving consensus objectives for use in designing the TOPOFF Exercise.

EVENT PROFILE

Each of the Multi-Disciplinary Groups discussed, refined, and prioritized those exercise objectives created during the Functional Group morning sessions. This review allowed an opportunity for participants to champion objectives that were of great interest to them and their respective discipline, as well as to permit reexamination of objectives that may have been neglected earlier in the day. The process thus achieved the Attorney General’s goal of capturing all relevant perspectives.

The end-state of the afternoon sessions was the preparation of at least six consensus objectives from each of the Multi-Disciplinary Groups. The resulting thirty or more objectives were prioritized by the groups, sorted by conference staff, and presented on May 21, 1999 in a plenary session for approval.

During the sorting process on the evening of May 20, conference staff members took the “raw material” from each session (morning and afternoon) and attempted to determine and clarify the themes and trends present. Categories were identified and then used to create a matrix of prioritized consensus objectives for review by the Conference participants. Nine overarching objective categories were identified for the TOPOFF Exercise (Figure 1).

The resulting prioritized recommendations were presented to a plenary session of the Conference on the morning of May 21. The recommended objectives reflected a broad consensus on a number of critical points, discussed in the next section of this report. Presented on the following pages is a detailed listing of the Multi-Disciplinary Groups prioritized recommendations, sorted by the nine objective categories.

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Figure 1: Matrix of recommended objectives from the Multi-Disciplinary Groups. Objectives were placed within nine objective areas of operation.