Crisis exercises to build digital triage and engagement skills for Vancouver Airport Authority

YVR approached us to provide a genuine stress test for digital responders belonging to its own team and those of key airport stakeholders as part of a biennial exercise to test the response to a serious aircraft incident.

Given the array of audiences present in any airport, effective digital triage and engagement has a critical role to play in:

  • Enabling airlines and airport agencies to share real-time updates with passengers and staff in terminals
  • Allowing emergency responders to establish situational awareness in relation to the situation (e.g. location of casualties, nature and scale of incident)
  • Providing ‘line of sight’ with the communications output of other agencies for a coordinated response

Using our Simulator platform we engaged and challenged different airport agencies by delivering real-time Twitter and Facebook-style feeds including passenger queries, witness imagery and accounts, as well as live on-scene reporting by journalists and media outlets. We also tested how responders managed misinformation emerging on social media channels.

Our live writer developed real-time media articles to bring the scenario to life and a team of telephone role-players put airport media handlers through their paces.

Findings highlighted during the training have led to updates being made to YVR’s incident communications protocol.

Project Outcomes

In feedback, the team commented: “Thank you and for all your flexibility today, that was fantastic! We and our partners were all super impressed with the tool and its capabilities. Great to see the use of it with media stories too and having you play as media with calls/emails. I have been impressed with the work we have done together.”

How could we help you?

Talk to us informally about how we approach this kind of work, ballpark budgets and timescales – or just to help you refine your brief: email [email protected]