Exercise Nord
Exercise Nord is a full-scale emergency preparedness exercise where emergency response agencies train to handle major incidents and crises.
In addition, Exercise Nord arranges education seminars, forums, public meetings, and various other activities.
The exercise is the largest civilian mainland exercise in the Nordic region and the largest of its kind in Europe organised by a university.
Nord University collaborates with many different agencies during the exercise, including the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, police, fire department, municipalities, county councils, emergency medical services, hospitals, the Home Guard, volunteer organisations, and the Coast Guard.
Several hundred bachelor's and master's students participate in the exercise.
It is crucial that all actors are prepared for major incidents such as natural events (e.g., floods, avalanches), major accidents (e.g., fires, large car collisions, shipwrecks), or intentional acts (e.g., terrorism, strategic assault).
The purpose of Exercise Nord is for emergency response actors, in line with the principle of cooperation, to train in handling major incidents and crises from local to regional levels.
The goal is to ensure better cooperation and management capability at the higher levels of emergency organisations up to the national level. Actors from different agencies and levels should share information and create a good common situational awareness as a basis for making decisions at the right level at the right time.
The goal of Exercise Nord is to integrate both "sharp" and "broad" aspects. The exercise serves as a network builder in the emergency preparedness community. Exercise Nord should be educational, student-oriented, and actor-driven.
A university-led exercise
Exercise Nord is a university-led crisis exercise. This means that it stimulates emergency preparedness improvements at Nord University and ensures that staff and students incorporate emergency preparedness and crisis exercises as part of, not in addition to, normal operations.
The university's social responsibility
Through Exercise Nord, Nord University has significantly fulfilled its social responsibility in terms of societal security and emergency preparedness. Exercise Nord increases the knowledge level, competence, and readiness of students, participating agencies and organisations, and the ripple effects of the exercise are seen in many areas of society.
When the exercise began in 1996, the intention was for nursing, police, and journalism students to play their roles in real life. Since then, Exercise Nord has grown and is now a massive emergency preparedness assembly at local, regional, and national level.
The fundamental purpose is still for students to gain experience in crisis management and to train for their future professional roles.
Exercise Nord has a relatively unique focus on students. The exercise is founded on students from various study programmes participating in and benefiting from the exercise.
Students participating in the exercise are introduced to key emergency preparedness concepts and participate in the exercise's education seminars. In addition, students are assigned various roles during the operational exercise, where they gain unique experiences with different agencies' functions in a crisis, inter-agency cooperation, and their own profession's role in a crisis.
Student roles
- First aid workers
- Markers
- Nurses in emergency departments
- Nurses at Mørkved University Hospital
- Journalists
- Controllers
- Telephone staff
- Observers
- Documentary film
- Streaming
Exercise Nord is held annually in week 17 (April). The exercise week begins with two open education seminars, with approximately 300 participants each day. On the third day, a full-scale cooperation exercise is played out from the incident site through all emergency services and further through all natural levels in the 2nd and 3rd line.
This operational exercise is an inter-municipal game exercise coordinated by municipalities, the county governor, the Crisis Support Unit/Civil Situation Centre, and the county council.
The scenario in the exercise is determined by the annual report from the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) and the Intelligence Service, the risk and vulnerability analysis from the County Governor, the assignment letter from the Ministry of Education and Research, and the exercise goals from participating units.
All exercises have a half-day tabletop pre-exercise, with agency-specific topics such as theft of research data, data breaches, acute workplace incidents, infection-exposed students, student uprisings, etc.
Exercise Nord celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020.
Since 1996, Nord University (formerly Bodø University College) has organised annual student-based crisis exercises for police, health, and journalism students.
Initially, the planning and organisation of the exercise was characterised by a high degree of volunteerism. Over time, the exercise has become gradually more integrated with emergency services and public authorities.
Since 2013, Exercise Nord has moved towards a national exercise standard with the implementation of full-scale cooperation exercises.
Previous exercises
- 2024: Ship collision and rescue operation at sea
- 2023: Fire at student hotel
- 2022: Anti-terror exercise
- 2021: Digital crisis and cooperation exercise
- 2020: Webinar: Digital emergency preparedness
- 2019: Ship collision, rescue scenario
- 2018: Ship fire, Rescue scenario
- 2017: Terrorist act at Nord University
- 2016: Ship incident, rescue scenario, inter-agency integration, asylum seeker issue
- 2015: Anti-terror, hostages, fire
- 2014: Nord University under radioactive exposure
- 2013: School shooting and hostage-taking