In an unassuming little office, tucked away at the end of a winding corridor in a building at Bournemouth University, quite incredible things are happening.

The room is the base for the university's own Disaster Management Centre, which works with countries around the globe to prevent national disasters.

By combining research, consultancy and bespoke training, the team helps international aid agencies and multi-national businesses to plan so they can handle any kind of crisis - from providing training on handling the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone to simulating a plane crash in Ghana.

Established in 2001, by one man who had a unique idea to take disaster management training to the countries that needed it - rather than making them come to the UK for a course - the centre is now globally recognised for its interactive training programmes.

An experienced teaching and research team of international experts work in partnership with organisations such as the United Nations, European Union and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to develop cohesion between the government, emergency services and the military, as well as tourism, aid agencies, community organisations and the media.

"The people that really need to know haven't got the time to take a year off work," explains Richard Gordon OBE, head of the Disaster Management Centre.

"It's far better if you can go to the country and work with the agencies all together around the table.

"One or two of us go there for a week or two weeks - if you get 30 people in the room you can go a long way and bring people together."

The first course took place in the former Yugoslavia and the centre's work continued on a small scale for some time, until a number of countries requested the training was rolled out across a wider area.

The team has since worked with African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, Kenya and Uganda, in Sri Lanka, Baghdad and Pakistan, in Turkey and Outer Mongolia as well as Venezuela.

Members of the team went to Sierra Leone in 2015 to develop a strategic national response to the Ebola crisis, training and mentoring the Office of National Security to help prepare them to take over the handling of the crisis from larger organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), WHO and UN.

The centre has also recently worked with the Ghanaian government and emergency management agency to produce a unique ‘national training policy’ for disaster management, ensuring common approaches across multiple agencies.

"Every country has got different hazards," explains Richard.

"Every country has different organisations that they want to try and get trained up.

"Countries used to talk about disaster in terms of relief. Now they talk about how to reduce the risk of this happening in the first place and we look at how to respond afterwards."

The courses look at various aspects of disasters, including media training, science elements and health services. The team draws on expertise based at the university, such as its forensic labs and cyber security unit, but also works with experts in other areas from other universities across the UK.

"No university in the UK can claim to have knowledge about every possible hazard so we bring experts with us," explains Richard.

"In one country we ran a national level seminar with an expert based on a tsunami hitting that country. We took a tsunami expert from a different university."

The centre also hosts two-week International Disaster Management Courses twice a year in Bournemouth, for overseas government, military and emergency service chiefs from various countries who come over to the UK to learn about disaster management. The courses often lead to the countries in question requesting further training back home.

It is now branching out into on-line courses, as well as working with independent schools around the UK on disaster management - a course Richard is now hoping to roll out to academies and free schools.

But for now, the team is preparing to start work in Qatar and Bahrain with future projects planned for Nepal and Venezuela.

"We have had the privilege of passing on knowledge to help manage crisis in real situations," says Richard.

"The work that we do is vital in helping governments and organisations to prepare well for disaster, and work in an integrated way to minimise impact and aid in the recovery of a region or situation.”