Guidelines Review Group

The INSARAG Guidelines remain a living document and will be subject to an ongoing process of development to improve and document the way we respond to save lives in major natural disasters like earthquakes, or building collapses in other disasters.

This is achieved through a regular five-year review cycle led by the INSARAG Guidelines Review Group (GRG), which aims to facilitate continuous improvement in classified teams. The INSARAG Steering Group (ISG) recognizes the importance of maintaining knowledge and process continuity between the 5-yearly GRG reviews.

The 2023 GRG is co-chaired by John Cawcutt (Australia) and Martin Evers (the Netherlands).

Guidelines Review Group 2023-2025
  Name CountryRegionPositionEmail
1Martin EversNetherlandsAEMECo-chair[email protected]
2John CawcuttAustraliaAsia-PacificCo-chair[email protected]
3Li LiChinaAsia-PacificMember [email protected]
4Safrizan Bin SuhainiMalaysiaAsia-PacificMember [email protected]
5Wee Keong LokSingaporeAsia-PacificMember [email protected]; [email protected]
6Sara RathbunUSAAmericasMember [email protected]
7Patricio FuentesChileAmericasMember [email protected]
8Martin PavekCzech RepublicAEMEMember [email protected] 
9Emmanuel ChapeauFranceAEMEMember [email protected]
10Yvonne GutmannGermanyAEMEMember [email protected]
11Ciro BologneseItalyAEMEMember [email protected]
12Fahad SultanQatarAEMEMember [email protected]
13Ove SislakNorwayAEMEMember [email protected]
14Belit TasdemirTurkiyeAEMEMember [email protected]
 15Peter WolffGermanyAEMERepresentative of IMWG[email protected]

Link to Draft Terms of Reference, to be endorsed by the ISG in April 2023

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2025 Working Groups and Team Leaders Meeting in Tunis: Minutes

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2024 Meeting in Marmaris: Minutes

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2023 Online Meeting

Final-Minutes-of-QATAR-GRG-Meeting-October-2023-3Download

Access Uncovered- Mozambique

After Cyclone Idai ripped through Mozambique, entire communities were surrounded by water. Humanitarians did everything they could to save lives and provide vital assistance. Link

Asia-Pacific Training

Asia Pacific Earthquake Response Exercise 2023

INSARAG Asia Pacific Earthquake Response Exercise 2023 hosted by the Australian government from 21-25 August 2023 in Brisbane, Australia. The exercise organizers were the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES), Fire and Rescue New South Wales (FRNSW), and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The objective of the exercise was to practice the INSARAG methodology with national and international responding organizations, having 330 participants from all relevant national government agencies as well as international USAR, EMT, UNDAC members, and MapAction. This exercise was designed to consist of two separate streams. The first stream is dedicated to National Response Coordination to go through the procedure of accepting international assistance, while the second stream is focused on coordination of the international response teams and activities to allow both national and international participants to practice the international deployment cycle with comprehensive and realistic scenario of Australia.

Working Groups

INSARAG Working Groups Co-Chairs (as of 16-10-2024)

Guidelines Review Group (GRG)
John Cawcutt [[email protected]]
Martin Evers [[email protected]]

Secretariat Focal Point:
Lucien Jaggi [[email protected]]		National Capacity Building WG
Wahyudi L. Putra [wahyudi_L[email protected]]
Sebastian Mocarquer[[email protected]]

Secretariat Focal Point:
Haruka Ezaki [[email protected]]
Training WG
Solveig Thorvaldsdottir [[email protected]]

Secretariat Focal Point:
Lucien Jaggi [[email protected]]		Quality Assurance IEC/R WG
Annika Coll [[email protected] ]
David Sochor [[email protected]]  

Secretariat Focal Point:
Stefania Trassari [[email protected]]
Medical WG
Anthony Macintyre [macintyr@gwu.edu]
Hector Fuentes [hfue333@hotmail.com]


Secretariat Focal Point:
Clement Kalonga [[email protected]]		Search and Rescue in Flood Response WG
Russ Gauden [[email protected]]
Jeremy Stubbs [[email protected]]
Jose Solla [[email protected]]

Secretariat Focal Point:
Lucien Jaggi [[email protected]]
Information Management WG
Peter Wolff [peter.[email protected]]
Jeff Maunder [[email protected]]

Secretariat Focal Point:
Lucien Jaggi [[email protected]] 		 

Preparedness

The preparedness phase is the period between disaster responses. In this phase, USAR Teams undertake preparatory measures to ensure that they are at the highest level of readiness for deployment as possible. Teams will conduct training and exercises, review lessons-learned from previous experiences, update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as required, and plan future responses.

The documents in this Technical Reference Library (TRL) section are Best Practices shared by USAR teams and INSARAG Working Groups. They are not endorsed by INSARAG and should be viewed as reference Materials. For more information on the TRL, click on this link.

This section is categorized into 7 subsections: