Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief
Exercise Dawn Wave
- Format
- Multi-rotation exercise for emerging diplomatic leaders
- Sector
- Government and national security
01The situation
A major regional disaster rarely remains purely humanitarian. Governments must simultaneously manage relief, diplomacy, logistics, public communication, competing national priorities and relationships with international partners.
Dawn Wave places future diplomatic leaders directly inside that complexity.
02The brief
Build an understanding of how complex regional disaster response is to coordinate. Participants practise diplomatic negotiation and crisis decision-making, experience multilateral coordination across governments and partners, and build cross-cultural collaboration.
What was tested
- Crisis diplomacy
- Humanitarian coordination
- Multilateral negotiation
- Cross-cultural collaboration
- Strategic communication
- Decision-making under uncertainty
03How it ran
Participants represent governments, agencies and other stakeholders responding to the consequences of a catastrophic regional tsunami. As the humanitarian situation deteriorates and aftershocks create new emergencies, teams receive evolving intelligence and crisis information through Foresight. They must negotiate with one another, develop policy responses, coordinate assistance and make decisions under severe time pressure.
The exercise culminates in a structured debrief supported by the decision and communication record captured through Foresight, turning the experience into practical lessons for diplomacy and regional crisis response.
More exercises
01DeliveredCorporate crisis management
Exercise Avian Shield
A poultry producer's leadership team works through an avian influenza outbreak in a single half-day.
Inside Avian Shield
02PartnershipStrategic wargaming
Exercise Ernstfall
Hybrid attacks escalate into an invasion of Lithuania. Germany's security cabinet must decide on Article 5.
Inside Ernstfall
03DeliveredWhole-of-government coordination
Exercise Datum
A submarine misses a communications check-in. Sixty officers coordinate the national response.
Inside Datum
04DeliveredNational security education
Exercise Hard Shell
196 students, two weeks, a Pacific island state in crisis. 97% rated it among their best experiences at university.
Inside Hard Shell
05DeliveredIntelligence collection and analysis
Honeypots and Overcoats
A tsunami, an assassination plot, a cyber attack and a great-power crisis arrived together. Participants triaged disinformation and open-source intelligence while a recurring cast of agentic actors pressed them for decisions.
Inside Honeypots and Overcoats
06Ready to runWildfire readiness
Exercise Red Horizon
Incident management teams test their coordination against a fire that will not wait for peak season.
Inside Red Horizon
07Ready to runWhole-of-government national security
Exercise Pacific Breakpoint
A contested election becomes civil unrest. Civil unrest becomes a regional crisis. Then foreign naval forces arrive.
Inside Pacific Breakpoint
08DeliveredFinancial services operational resilience
Exercise Counterparty
A severe-but-plausible disruption asked one question: can the organisation keep its critical operations running? Leaders decided what to protect, when to escalate and how to communicate as uncertainty grew.
Inside Counterparty
Request a briefing
Which decisions does your team need to practise?
Every scenario here can be adapted to your organisation, or we can build one around the situation you are most concerned about.