Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT)

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 theaters.

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 course 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.

The course is organized under the patronage of Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Course leader

Professor Andrea de Guttry

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.

Course aim

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.

Credits info

ENTRI Certification

This HEAT course has obtained the “C3MC” label“ which proves that the Course is coherent with the minimum standards requested by ENTRI/EU. Through the certification process, ENTRi aims at ensuring harmonisation of training standards among training providers working on civilian crisis management training.

Fee info

EUR 950: The cost 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.