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Some of the more than 100 delegates from 18 countries form one of the working groups for the first Multinational Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) Staff Planning Workshop held in Manila. |
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In November 2000,
Multinational Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) planners from 18 countries
met in Manila.
Their week-long mission: to develop habitual relationships with MPAT planners
from other nations and to become familiar with common crisis action planning
procedures. This was facilitated by a week of staff planning. The first
MPAT Staff Planning Workshop was hosted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP), and co-sponsored by the AFP and the U.S. Pacific Command.
The Staff Planning Workshop had been preceded by three other recent MPAT workshops, all of which focused on developing concepts and identifying common standing operating procedures (SOP). Expansion of regional interest in the MPAT concept has been rapid – five countries (Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and the U.S.) attended the initial May 2000 workshop. The second workshop had seven participating countries. Eleven attended the third. In January 2001, 17 countries sent personnel to a follow-on Concept Development Workshop in Honolulu, Hawaii. According to Col. Bob Brewster, USAF, who spoke for the MPAT Secretariat, the intent is to conduct two Concept and SOP Development Workshops and two Staff Planning Workshops each year.
Overall goals for the MPAT program set by participating countries are to:
1. Improve multinational cooperation and interoperability in responding to crisis events, focusing initially on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
2. Develop closer relationships among professional planners from the various nations who likely will be called to work together in an actual contingency.
3. Identify and become familiar with a common set of planning procedures at the operational levels.
4. Familiarize MPAT planners with information sharing and collaborative planning technologies that will prove useful in day-to-day collaborative situations, as well as in times of crisis.
Countries that choose to participate are not obliged to send planners should a crisis arise. The underlying premise is that countries may participate in actual response operations consistent with their national objectives and capabilities to respond. MPAT simply provides a venue for developing and refining multinational procedures to make such a response faster and more efficient. In the case of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, that can translate directly into saved lives.
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The workshop uses a hypothetical typhoon and volcanic eruption multi-disaster in the Philippines as a planning scenario to improve multinational responses to future humanitarian crises in the Pacific. |
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During the scenario for the November 2000 workshop, a simulated super typhoon strikes the northern island of Luzon in the Republic of the Philippines. Recovery efforts engage the vast majority of disaster response resources available through the Philippine National Disaster Coordinating Council and all local non-governmental agencies. Within a week, a second super typhoon strikes the southern Philippines, and the possibility of a major volcanic eruption threatens the island of Negros.
To alleviate suffering in the south, the Philippine government requests international assistance, and tasks the AFP to provide the command and control for a multinational military humanitarian assistance response to the situation. Joint Task Force Bayanihan activates and becomes the core around which a Multinational Force (MNF) is formed. The MPAT, a cadre of military planners capable of rapidly augmenting a MNF headquarters, arrives to assist with crisis action planning expertise.
