The Case for HEAT

Ebe Brons, founder and CEO of the Centre for Safety and Development, compares in-person HEAT courses with e-learning alternatives. He finds that in-person courses are more effective—keep reading to find out why.

“For the things we have to learn

before we can do them,

we learn by doing them.”

Aristotle

What is HEAT?

The number of casualties among humanitarian workers, diplomats, and journalists in hostile environments is increasing.

To decrease the risk of becoming a casualty, these professionals often attend HEAT (Hostile Environment Awareness Training) courses.

A HEAT training is a multi-day course in which professionals learn the skills, knowledge, and attitude to improve their personal security in hostile environments.

This residential training lasts three to five days and emphasises practical exercises and realistic simulations. Typical topics are security awareness, dealing with aggression, medical first aid, hostage survival, communication skills and ammunition and weapon awareness. Basic land navigation, convoy driving, relocation, hibernation, and evacuation are sometimes added.

Recently, many organisations that sent their staff to HEAT training were hit by cuts from their government. This made them question their modus operandi when delivering their aid and services in hostile environments.

Some argue that sending their staff into war zones and other risk areas can be done with e-learning as a preparation. I argue that e-learning or remote learning is ineffective and will not prepare them for the risks they face.

What is the difference between HEAT and e-learning?

The main difference between HEAT and e-learning/virtual/remote learning (I will call this e-learning) is that the latter focuses on theoretical knowledge and understanding. Using e-learning, you can transfer knowledge from the teacher to the student, which can be very effective when done right.

HEAT training puts theoretical knowledge into practice through exercises and simulations (also referred to as scenarios). These exercises and simulations involve storylines, actors, weapons, training villages and props.

Why prepare for risk areas?

Why do we train professionals to safely work and travel in dangerous environments? We train them to ensure they operate effectively in risk areas and return home safely.

What are the risks when working in hostile environments?

According to the latest report (2024) from Humanitarian Outcomes, a research institute, the main security risks are airstrikes, shelling, assault, complex attacks and IEDs, kidnapping, and shooting. Another significant risk is car accidents.

How to prepare for risks in hostile environments?

The above mentioned risks are primarily physical, although they can also have a psychological impact. They are dangerous situations that can damage your body. To avert these dangers, a physical reaction is needed.

For example, if you encounter a landmine, you must stop walking immediately. If you are in a car accident and bleeding, you need to stop the bleeding. When being robbed, you must calmly comply and hand over your belongings. These are physical (inter)actions.

Psychomotor skills are key to effective physical action. Some specific movements are best learned through physical training, such as applying a bandage or stopping to walk when encountering a landmine. When trained frequently, your psychomotor skills improve, allowing you to perform them without much thought.

How does e-learning prepare you for security risks?

Preparing for risk areas through e-learning is founded on the premise that when students possess cognitive knowledge of the appropriate action in a hazardous situation, they will enact it when the circumstances require.

When you are in a comfortable and well-known situation, you remember the information you have learned and can use it to avoid danger.

For instance, you know that crossing the street with a red traffic light is dangerous. Others have a green light and might hit you. The cognitive knowledge that you must stop for a red traffic light keeps you safe. This illustrates when theoretical knowledge works well.

The risks in a hostile environment are more unpredictable and stressful. When dealing with immediate danger, for example, during a robbery, people have difficulty accessing their higher brain functions, where their theoretical knowledge is stored.

The more basic part of their brain takes over, which is more suited for dealing with immediate danger. This part of the brain is ruled by instinct, habits, and behaviour, not theoretical knowledge.

In the example of a robbery, the victim might have theoretical knowledge that it is better to comply in most robbery cases. However, due to stress, the victim has limited access to this knowledge and freezes, failing to comply with the request to hand over the wallet. Consequently, the robber uses violence to obtain the wallet.

Theoretical knowledge did not help the victim in this stressful situation.

How does HEAT training prepare you for danger?

HEAT training specifically addresses the problem of stress hampering access to theoretical knowledge.

This problem is countered in two ways. First, by deeply imprinting new effective behaviour as psychomotor skills.

The emphasis on exercises and real-life simulations is a high-pressure cooker that implants new behaviour. By doing and not just thinking, your psychomotor skills improve. This phenomenon is extensively written down in Benjamin Bloom’s and Elizabeth Simpson’s taxonomies. Practising these skills in various simulations throughout the course will allow you to utilise them in complex situations.

When immersed in hyper-realistic simulations, the students develop virtual memories. If you are, after the course, robbed in real life, there is this notion that it happened to you in the past. And it did, during the training. You will know what worked well during the simulation, and you can apply it in real life. This increases the chance of the situation ending well.

Secondly, the exercises and simulations shape your attitude, teaching you to remain calm, allowing you to access higher brain functions under stress.

External triggers activate the more basic part of your brain. This can be different for each person, but most people will find a robbery, kidnapping, and shelling very stressful.

How you react to stress can be a conscious decision. During HEAT, the students learn to regulate their stress via specialised exercises, mind steering, and breathing techniques. This is a very personal process that is guided by the trainer and training actors specialised in aggression.

When mastered, the student can access higher cognitive brain functions, even during stressful situations. This allows for more educated choices and effective behaviour to lower the risk and improve survival.

Conclusion

When travelling and working in a dangerous area, you are confronted with physical security risks.

To deal with these risks, you need knowledge, calmness, and psychomotor skills to execute them.

While e-learning and remote learning are beneficial for acquiring theoretical knowledge, this knowledge has limited value in hostile environments. Stress can hinder your brain’s capacity to apply what you’ve learned. Moreover, practical skills cannot be effectively taught through e-learning.

During HEAT training, you learn to remain calm under pressure, allowing you to keep thinking amid stress and select the appropriate response. This attitude can only be realised by engaging in practical exercises and through immersion in real-life exercises.

Exercises and simulations also enhance the theoretical knowledge that students acquire. They turn theoretical knowledge into practical skills. Repeating these psychomotor skills in exercises will enable their application without much thought—you just do it.

Training, in general, is intended to address a problem. HEAT training is highly effective when the issue involves security risks in hazardous areas. E-learning programmes are not suited to these settings and can instil a misleading sense of confidence in students and organisations.

And let’s be honest, imagine you are in a remote location, stuck in a car crash, in pain, with a life-threatening bleeding. Would you like to be helped by someone with hours of practical medical training to stop your bleeding? Or by someone who has clicked through an e-learning?

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or position of GISF or the author’s employers.

About the author:

Ebe Brons is founder and CEO of CSD (Centre for Safety and Development),  a foundation specialised in safety and security for humanitarian organisations. He is an advisory board member of the International NGO Safety & Security Association (INSSA).

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