Creation of an exercise scenario: A collaborative design effort

To increase the preparedness Crisis response and management authorities carry out various forms of exercises. This article is based upon a three year long project named Gaining security symbiosis (GSS). The project was aiming to increase the collaboration between crisis actors in the Swedish-Norway border region through exercises. We argue that creation of scenarios is a design challenge. In the GSS project, the exercises are built upon designed scenarios, which should make the exercise realistic and make the trainee train the expected. We propose a scenario design method that is built upon an iterative approach and that includes collaboration with the actors that are involved in the exercise. The method also includes a set of characteristics that could be used to evaluate the events of the scenario. The method have been developed and refined during the project and show some promising result. There is however a need for future research when it comes to further development and evaluation of the proposed design method.