Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Livorno (Italy)
Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT)
4 - 8 May 2015
Deadline for application: 13 April 2015

Hostile environment awareness plays an important role in the effectiveness and impact of crisis management missions; it is also a chief responsibility that each seconding or contracting actor has vis-à-vis its deployed personnel ('duty of care'), so as to further address the issue of their protection while operating in high risk operational theatres.

Hostile environment awareness is essential to coping with internal and external security threats on the ground and is conducive to: a) enhancing the resilience of personnel when working in hazardous environments; b) increasing the understanding of proactive security and of basic field measures; c) providing personnel with the basic tools and techniques needed to avoid potentially dangerous situations or to cope adequately with actual endangering ones in the field.

This Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) has been designed and developed jointly by the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and the Carabinieri Corps General Headquarters, precisely with the aim to address such needs.
Training objectives 
HEAT is an intensive 40-hour course that aims at training professionals to deal effectively with risk-associated and emergency/critical situations while deployed in hostile environments abroad. The training is expected to improve participants’ understanding of the minimum behavioural field requirements when working as a team members of an international field operation irrespective of their national or professional  background. The course has two primary objectives:
1. To improve participants’ knowledge of multiple threats present in hostile field environments and of ways and means of dealing with them in an effective manner;
2. To rehearse and practice safety and security procedures according to specific threats

Modules
The Course content is clustered in five modules:
• Module I - EU personnel deployed in hostile environments
• Module II - Situational training exercise (STX)
• Module III - Medical training: health maintenance on mission 
• Module IV - Orientation , communication s & 4-wheel drive 
• Module V - Field training exercise (FTX)

Methodology
The Course, in addition to general background lectures, focuses on operational procedures and practice. Participants are tested through various scenarios, advanced role-playing sessions and simulation exercises. There is ample use of specific case study material, outdoor activities and extensive reference is made to the field experiences of both lectures and participants.

Target group 
The target group for this training is mission staff selected to be deployed to low/middle/high risk missions or recently deployed to such missions who have preferably already attended at least a general introductory course on crisis management operations or have at least gained relevant experience in international field operations. 

Teaching staff & director
Professor Andrea de Guttry (Scuola Sant’Anna) and the Commander of the 1st Carabinieri Paratrooper Regiment “Tuscania” are the Co-Directors of the Course. Lecturers and trainers are mainly from the 1st Paratrooper Regiment “Tuscania”, the unique Special Operations Force of Carabinieri Corps, currently engaged in critical countries and high risk operational theatres all over the world.

Details
Location: Leghorn, Italy

Dates 2015:
• HEAT Course II-2015: 4 - 8 May 2015. Deadline for application: 13 April 2015
• HEAT Course III-2015: 5 - 9 October 2015. Deadline for application: 14 September 2015
• HEAT Course IV-2015: 9-13 November 2015. Deadline for application: 19 October 2015

Course fee: 
€ 950,00 (it includes tuition, full board at the basic facilities – shared rooms, breakfast not included – of the 1st Carabinieri Paratrooper Regiment 'Tuscania', Livorno, Italy, reference material and public liability insurance)

Working language: English

Number of Participants: max. 20/course

All information can be found here.