US Northern Lights Exercise
The first ever critical infrastructure exercise for the five states Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska
InfraGard Minnesota Members Alliance and its public and private partners including the Department of Homeland Security, Safeguard Iowa and others will conduct a Northern US multi-state Critical Infrastructure exercise with participants from Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska in September of 2010.
The exercise will have three primary goals; 1) better understand the threat and potential impact of terrorism, whether domestic or international, 2) identify gaps and opportunities in information-sharing and emergency response, and 3) identify long-term opportunities to reduce vulnerability, coordinate response, collaborate on preparedness and maximize limited resources. These goals support the National Infrastructure Protection Plan.
  Scenario: The scenario will focus on terrorism and the impacts to and protection of critical infrastructure. Design efforts will focus on a plausible event given the current and ongoing assessment of terrorism threat in the United States. The expert panelists will include critical infrastructure, non-governmental organization, academic instituitions, government representatives responsible for crisis response preparedness and resilience, key experts in homeland security and criticial infrastructure and students in areas of security, government policy, emergency response and other fields. Participants will be professionals in security, emergency management, risk management, business continuity, emergency response and others who represent companies, non-profit organizations or government agencies in these sectors and fulfill key roles in their organization during emergencies and disasters.
Geography: The Northern States in the scope of this exercise will include Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.
The 5 state area covers more than 357,000 square miles, shares 800 miles of international border, one of the top 25 ports in the US, key rail and highway routes, a significant amount of power generation and transmission, high volumes of food and production and hundreds of thousands of businesses, including home offices and key assets of several Fortune 100 companies.
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