Nature-Triggered Emergency Response and Domestic Operations

The CDSN seeks to provide value to DND in terms of exploring new research agendas and key engagement activities to provide maximum value to the Defence Team to deal with future large-scale natural hazards and pandemics. The CAF played an important role across the country, surging troops into long-term care homes, distributing PPE, and distributing vaccines. COVID-19 and recent storms have raised questions for everyone, including the CAF: i) What are the sub-regional institutional capacities to prepare for, respond to and recover from extreme events? ii) What are the current arrangements and practices in multi-level and cross-sectoral institutional coordination? iii) How can the prevention and mitigation measures be improved? What can we learn about the role of armed forces from other comparable countries by studying contemporary emergency cases? This theme will: i) research existing response systems; ii) build networks among CAF, civil society actors, and provincial and municipal governments; and iii) prepare future generations to deal with emerging challenges. This theme builds on the strengths of CDSN, the Canadian Risk and Hazards Network (CRHNet), and the Canadian Journal of Emergency Management (CJEM). The research agenda includes identifying key stakeholders with whom the CAF operates, how to improve the Whole of Canada response to such emergencies so that it not only does better in the short term but also when other emergencies arise in the future.

Output:
− Report for the purpose of advising CAF/DND
− Technical reports outlining conversations with stakeholders through major activities, including Webinars (July 2022 and Jan 2023) and Workshops (Winnipeg, Dec 4-5, 2022 and Toronto, Mar 16-17, 2023). Similar activities are planned for the next two years.
− Journal articles for knowledge dissemination during the grant tenure until 2025.
The blurb is given below for more details: