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Lessons Learned from WARN Tabletop Exercises
Author(s) -
Whitler John,
Stormont Caitlin
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8833.2011.tb11577.x
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , plan (archaeology) , key (lock) , computer science , incident response , process management , computer security , business , sociology , social science , history , archaeology
This article discusses Water and Wastewater Agency Response Networks (WARNs), which allow utilities to share resources with one another during an incident response through the use of mutual aid and assistance agreements. The article focuses on the need to exercise how these agreements are used, which can be done by tabletop exercises in the absence of an actual incident. Tabletop exercises (TTXs) allow WARNs to practice and exercise the operational plan or other procedures so that requesting and responding utilities have a better understanding of how to implement their WARN agreement during an actual incident. The advantages are discussed, along with the objectives of TTXs, documenting and identifying the follow‐up actions from an exercise, and WARN resources that are offered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Key lessons from the exercises are summarized.