Editor’s Note: Maximize Training, Minimize Risk

The disaster stage—from local events to worldwide catastrophes—is changing. Training and gaming are efficient ways to determine the key players, learn through trial and error, and create actionable tasks that can mitigate disasters in the real world. Tabletop exercises offer a low-cost, easy-to-implement option, whereas full-scale exercises provide more intensive training but with additional investment in time and resources. However, new technologies and innovative thinking are changing these traditional forms of training. For example, artificial intelligence, simulations, disaster wargaming, and dual-world concepts take routine training activities to another level by injecting realistic and more engaging tasks.

In this February edition of the Domestic Preparedness Journal, subject matter experts share creative new ways to train for future disasters. They also recognize the current threat environment and challenges that could impact future events. The events and decisions of today are shaping the hazards, vulnerabilities, and threats of tomorrow. As such, preparedness, mitigation, and response efforts must also transform through training that evolves with changing circumstances.

With this month’s spotlight on training, it is a good opportunity to remember the extensive, full-scale “Thunderbird and Whale” exercise the journal highlighted in 2022, the first time in U.S. history that Indigenous Tribes took the lead position on a national-level exercise. That exercise gave each Tribe the autonomy to exercise its emergency operations plans, objectives, and emergency support functions while regionally coordinating communications, resources, materials, equipment, and supplies. Sadly, the leader of that exercise, who was one of the journal’s advisors for the past eight years, passed away on January 30, 2025. Lynda Zambrano’s legacy of community service and emergency management training nevertheless lives on through all the people she touched, the organizations she established or worked with, and the roadmaps she left behind.