PREPSHIELD brings its pandemic preparedness exercise to Romania

On April 22, the PREPSHIELD project will hold its third and final Tabletop Exercise in Bucharest, a national-scale simulation designed to test how well citizens, institutions, and civil society can work together when a health crisis strikes.

The Bucharest exercise is the third in a series of pilots, following earlier editions in Hamburg and Piemonte. Each was deliberately situated in a different context, local, regional, and now national, and in societies with varying levels of public trust in institutions. Romania, characterised by significantly lower institutional trust, an ageing population, and pronounced urban–rural healthcare disparities, represents the most demanding environment the project has tested to date.

What we expect to learn

More than a training event, this exercise is a validation exercise. It is designed to generate concrete insights that will directly shape PREPSHIELD’s final deliverables:

Test whether the Best Practice guidelines developed within the project genuinely support inclusive, citizen-centred crisis communication under realistic, pressured conditions.
Evaluate how well the Platforma PREPSHIELD and mobile app integrate into live decision-making, including projections, agent-based model feedback, surveys, and real-time notifications.
Assess the Tabletop Exercise methodology itself as a learning and testing environment, identifying what works and what needs refinement before the approach is handed on to practitioners.
Explore how public authorities, healthcare institutions, emergency services, and civil society organisations collaborate when faced with escalating uncertainty, and where the friction points lie.
Surface the barriers and enablers for reaching vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities during a health crisis, in a context where trust in official channels cannot be taken for granted.

A whole-of-society design

A distinctive feature of the PREPSHIELD approach is the inclusion of a Market Group alongside the Crisis Management Team. Rather than limiting the exercise to institutional actors, the design deliberately introduces societal perspectives, from vulnerable communities, minority groups, and civil society organisations, as a structured feedback mechanism. Decisions made by the crisis team are evaluated round by round through a societal lens, making inclusion not an afterthought but a core part of the methodology.

What happens after

Findings from the Bucharest exercise will feed into PREPSHIELD’s final policy recommendations, refined best practice guidelines, and a validated TTE methodology that European practitioners can adapt for future use.

Last Tabletop Exercice