KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Operation Outbreak facilitated a Bluetooth-enabled tabletop exercise on October 6 at the Mitigation of Biological Threats in the ASEAN Region Program Coordination and Stakeholders’ Meeting, using its dynamic training platform to strengthen regional coordination and preparedness for biological threats.
Invited by Global Affairs Canada’s Weapons Threat Reduction Program, the team combined a live outbreak simulation with a tabletop exercise to produce a 90-minute program that tested participants’ judgment and cooperation as they navigated a fictional biological threat.
The meeting was co-chaired by the governments of Malaysia and Canada and brought together ASEAN Member States and health security partners to review biological threat preparedness and future cooperation. Its Health Security Interface priority focuses on practical cooperation between health and security sectors.
The exercise was designed to connect outbreak response with its wider economic and national security implications, requiring different authorities to share information and coordinate decisions.
In the fictional Central Station scenario, participants in Science, Policy, Law Enforcement and Public cells faced unexplained illness at a busy transport hub, followed by pressure on health services and travel restrictions. Cues consistent with a possible deliberate event challenged them to connect protective decisions with threat assessment and investigation.
Alongside the tabletop exercise, participants used the Operation Outbreak app to simulate transmission of the emerging pathogen, while QR codes provided protective measures, tests and vaccines. The Outbreak Visualizer made recorded contacts and transmission histories visible for review, providing participants a shared reference for discussing decisions.
The engagement took place ahead of the second anniversary of the adoption of the ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Strengthening Regional Biosafety and Biosecurity. Among its eight commitments, Commitment 2 calls for an ASEAN Biosafety and Biosecurity Network to facilitate “knowledge sharing, coordination, and cooperation” among Member States, partners and relevant stakeholders.
“Preparing for biological threats means giving health-security professionals opportunities to practice working through uncertainty together,” said Kian Sani, co-founder and COO of Operation Outbreak. “By combining a live outbreak simulation with discussion, we help participants explore how their decisions shape a response and where information sharing and coordination could improve.”
“The simulation exercise underscored that preparedness for and response to biological threats demands robust multisectoral collaboration. Active and regular cooperation and communication between health, security, and defence stakeholders is essential to mitigate the impacts of disease events, whether they are natural, accidental, or deliberate in origin,” said Trevor Smith, Senior Program Manager for Biological & Chemical Security and CBRN Cross-Cutting Issues at Global Affairs Canada’s Weapons Threat Reduction Program.
The engagement builds on Operation Outbreak’s recent biosecurity programming with the Youth for Biosecurity Fellowship in Geneva and at the Global Health Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur. Across these settings, Operation Outbreak uses facilitated discussion and live simulation to help participants practice the cross-sector decisions on which global health security depends.
Media Contact:
Sellers Hill
+1 (857) 858-5798
sellers@operationoutbreak.org
www.operationoutbreak.org
About Operation Outbreak, Inc.
Operation Outbreak is a nonprofit organization that uses experiential learning and outbreak simulations to build practical outbreak preparedness skills among students, professionals, and policymakers worldwide.