LONDON, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- A major international exercise using advanced new technology to help European nations improve their response to massive coastal flooding was held throughout Europe last week. Emergency command centres in the UK, Sweden, Holland and Ireland worked together to coordinate a joined-up response to flooding from a simulated tsunami in another EU member state. The exercise was of particular relevance in the light of the major tidal surge that nearly overwhelmed flood defences in the eastern United Kingdom, Germany and Holland in November 2007, and the growing threat from rising sea levels caused by climate change.

The EU FloodCommand programme, co-funded by the European Commission, is a project run by emergency training and technology company VectorCommand. It was set up to improve pan-European cooperation in the event of major coastal flooding emergencies such as tidal surges and tsunamis.

The exercise conducted last week explored how emergency services and governments of European nations could best coordinate their resources to help a fellow European nation deal with the results of a massive tsunami.

Senior personnel from coast guard and emergency management organisations and government departments in the UK, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands, along with representatives from nine other countries, all participated in the exercise, working from command centres in their home countries as well as in the simulated recipient nation command centre.

The complex issues of how to offer and prepare emergency response forces such as helicopters and boats, transport them to the recipient nation, and deploy and coordinate them in the recipient nation, were all explored during the exercise, with VectorCommand's Command Support System being used to improve communications and integrate all aspects of resource command and control.

Rod Stafford, the project chairman, said: 'The challenge of maintaining high levels of data exchange over diverse networks across multiple national boundaries was amply illustrated during the exercise, but the system's resilience to variable communications networks ensured that no data was lost and enabled operations to continue at a high tempo.

'Valuable lessons were learned by all participants in the exercise, and these lessons will be incorporated into future pan-European emergency planning.

'The Command Support System proved itself able to support the coordination of multilateral, multi-agency operations while overcoming the challenges of interoperability traditionally associated with such interventions.'

For further information contact: Stephen Prendergast, pressoffice@eufloodcommand.eu, Tel: +44(0)2392-410400, http://www.eufloodcommand.eu