Future leaders in civil defence from eight countries are likely to be back in Dunedin next year after the success of a recent international training programme in disaster management.
Otago Civil Defence group controller Chris Hawker says hosting the 29 high-flying civil defence and disaster management officials earlier this month as part of the annual training and development programme was "a feather in Dunedin's cap''.
Course participants came from across the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, with eight senior Red Cross personnel also involved.
The course ran for two weeks, with sessions in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland as well as Otago.
Mr Hawker supported the training programme and said a disaster management field trip, held in Dunedin for the first time this year, was likely to return to the city.
Overseas participants, based at a Dunedin disaster management centre, faced a "very, very challenging'' exercise scenario.
In the exercise, Queenstown was cut off by road during the peak tourist season, and 80,000 people were stranded in the resort with access to the airport but with only enough food to last for 48 hours, Mr Hawker said.
Places such as Queenstown routinely received daily resupplies of food, and if this was cut off, it would not take long for food supplies to "start to get a bit thin''.
The participants had not fully overcome the challenge, but had learned a great deal, including how to work with other people as part of a team.
Otago was a "pretty significant region'' and needed to be contributing to the wider discussion about disaster management.
