National Fire Agency Conducts Localized Basic HSEEP Courses; Shyh-Yuan Maa: Institutionalized Drills and Training Strengthen Central and Local Response Resilience

Deputy Minister Shih-Yuan Maa of the Interior attended the opening ceremony of the 4^th session of the "Basic HSEEP Course" held at the National Fire Agency (NFA) today (12th). This course brought together disaster prevention and relief personnel from municipal and local governments, professional cooperation teams, and central ministries for basic disaster response training, aiming to enhance the understanding and application capabilities of municipal and local governments in disaster prevention and relief drills and verifications. At the same time, basic disaster response training was conducted, with the expectation of introducing and combining international standards with local practical experience to strengthen the drill planning and response capabilities of governments at all levels and across ministries, and comprehensively improve Taiwan's overall resilience in the face of disasters.

Deputy Minister Maa explained that the HSEEP is all about "capability building." The NFA has adopted the standardized framework of the U.S. Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP). The clearly specified exercise procedures, standardized documents, assessment mechanism and improvement system helped participants understand the exercise planning process and improvement mechanism, thereby enhancing the overall capacity and collaborative effectiveness of local governments and support teams in disaster response. At the same time, it enables disaster response models to "see the problems, find the solutions, and track down the improvements", and cultivates professional instructors to promote future domestic exercises, thus building a stable, long-term, and sustainable professional capacity for disaster prevention and relief in Taiwan.

Deputy Minister Maa pointed out that the NFA has planned five sessions of 5-day basic HSEEP training course from December 2025) to January 2026. IT is estimated to see approximately 300 trainees in the training. The course covers the entire process of exercise design, execution, evaluation and improvement. The systematic training is expected to guide all units to feed the results of the exercises back into routine preparation and policy improvement, so that the exercises can truly become a key tool for improving response capabilities and implement the core spirit of "using exercises to verify systems and using evaluation to promote improvement".

Taiwan is located in an earthquake zone and is susceptible to extreme weather events, including typhoons, earthquakes, and combined disasters. Disaster prevention and relief work is more than a single agency alone to tackle; it must rely on institutionalized drills and cross-domain collaboration to integrate resources quickly and respond effectively in the event of a disaster. Refining drills is a key in promoting disaster prevention among the general public and strengthening government governance effectiveness. The MOI will continue to work together with the central and local governments and social organizations to fully integrate standardized drills into various disaster preparedness operations and enhance Taiwan's disaster prevention and relief resilience.