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The Disciplines of Emergency Management: Preparedness This module focuses on the actions that are taken by governments, nongovernmental organizations, communities, families, and individuals, that help to prepare them for the actions required of them during an actual disaster response. Preparedness, within the field of emergency management, can be defined as a state of readiness to respond to a disaster, crisis or any other type of emergency situation. Preparedness is a theme that permeates all facets of the emergency management field, and most aspects of the emergency management profession. Since the building of fallout shelters and the posting of air raid wardens in the 1950s, preparedness has advanced significantly and its role as a building block of emergency management continues. No emergency management organization can function without a strong preparedness capability. This capability is built through planning, training and exercising. Today we recognize that all organizations, whether they are private, nongovernmental, or governmental, are susceptible to the consequences disasters and must therefore ensure their preparedness. We also know that preparedness must focus not only on the protection of citizens, property and essential government services in the aftermath of a disaster event, but also on ensuring that the viability of the community – including its businesses and markets, its social services, and its character, are able sustainable despite the hazard risks that exist. Emergency management agencies alone cannot ensure this, which is why the practice continues to expand. As an academic field and an applied practice, emergency management is young. The fields upon which it draws are steeped in tradition—relying less on academic or analytic processes. Without a foundation tying academia and structured analytic methodologies with tradition, the extreme complexity of emergency management will not be effectively managed. A systematic approach is necessary for emergency management. The FEMA National Preparedness (NP) Division has depicted the planning process, beginning with planning for the range of hazards that exist and working in a cyclical manner to establish and improve preparedness. This cycle recognizes the importance of the four major components of any preparedness effort, namely planning, equipment, training, and exercise, and stresses the importance of evaluation and improvement. This cycle also represents preparedness not only for government jurisdictions at all levels, but also preparedness actions taken by individuals, businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and other entities. Mitigation versus Preparedness Significant confusion exists regarding what constitutes mitigation and preparedness (and how much crossover exists.) At the Federal level, mitigation and preparedness are highly defined, with FEMA maintaining two completely distinct divisions to manage these functions. However, at the State, local, organizational, and private levels, the boundaries are less defined. The major distinction is in the mission of the actions themselves. Mitigation attempts to eliminate hazard risk by reducing either the likelihood or consequence components of the risk associated with the particular hazard. Preparedness, on the other hand, seeks to improve the abilities of agencies and individuals to response to the consequences of a disaster event once the disaster event has occurred. Preparedness: The Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) The Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) is the playbook by which emergency management response operations are conducted. However, the development of an EOP is not just documentation of what will be done and by whom, but rather the cyclical process by which these factors are determined. There are select components that appear in almost all EOPs, having formed and standardized because they are the most logical presentation of the response and recovery needs of most jurisdictions. These components include: The Base Plan The Functional Annexes The Hazard or Situational Annexes Planning both dictates and accounts for the equipment that must be purchased to treat the disaster consequences that are planned for and to carry out the tasks assigned. Planning also becomes the basis of training and exercise, and responders train to the capabilities laid out in the plan and rely upon the assumptions captured by the plan to determine those core competencies that are sought. And exercises that are conducted are what test the effectiveness of the jurisdiction or organization to carry out what is prescribed in the plan. In the United States, nationwide planning efforts are guided by the FEMA-produced Comprehensive Planning Guide-101 (CPG-101), created to provide general yet standardized guidelines on developing Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs). Evacuation Planning For many communities, citizen evacuation in major disasters is their greatest planning consideration. For disasters with advance notice, or for situations where post-disaster mass-movement of citizens is possible, advance planning is required in order to determine activation, routes, transportation methods, destinations, security, order adherence, and facilitation. Many communities have conducted evacuation planning, but few have conducted a full-scale test of those plans. After Katrina, the US Department of Transportation conducted a Gulf Coast evacuation plan study and found there exist seven key elements that can be used to measure the comprehensive nature of a plan, including: Decision Making and Management Planning Public Communication and Preparedness Evacuation of People with Special Needs Operations Sheltering Considerations Mass Evacuation Training and Exercises Special Needs Populations Traditionally, emergency planning has looked at a homogenous population thought of collectively as the ‘community’. However, communities are made up of distinct individuals and groups, each with unique conditions that define their lives, their interactions, and their abilities. Communities must assess their population to determine what special needs exist, and how those needs must be addressed in the emergency plan. Planners must work with representatives from or representing each group. By including these key stakeholders, the planners are better able to adjust existing policies or create new policies that allow for the safety and security of these groups before, during, and after emergency events. Preparedness Equipment Emergency management organizations rely upon an incredibly-diverse range of equipment categories by which they are able to perform the response roles assigned to them. These categories of equipment include (among many others): Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Firefighting apparatuses Communications systems In the preparedness phase, consideration of equipment becomes very important, as it is during this phase that: 1. Equipment needs are identified 2. Equipment is purchased 3. Staff is trained in the use of the equipment required to meet anticipated response requirements. Education and Training Programs Education and training has always been integral to the emergency services. Firefighters acquired (and continue to acquire) their skills by attending the fire academy. Police officers did the same at the police academy. EMS officials received medical and emergency first aid training from both public and private sources. However, there has been a revolution of sorts in the provision of education and training in the emergency management profession. The advent of emergency management training and education coincided with the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1979, which touched off development of the practice as a profession. FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute has become the focus of emergency management professionalization, establishing the core competencies of emergency management professionals and developing a common understanding of what constituted an emergency management curriculum. Public Preparedness Education Perhaps the most difficult component of emergency management preparedness training is that which focuses on the general public. Public preparedness education, also called risk communication, is a field that has seen vastly mixed success. In recent years there has been a flurry of mass communication in the emergency management and preparedness spectra, but very little has come close to achieving such widespread behavioral change for two reasons: most campaigns are conducted by emergency managers with understandably little training in the highly complex social marketing and public education disciplines, and the public faces myriad risks on a daily basis beyond what is being communicated. CERT is one effort that has seen a great amount of success despite the obstacles that exist. Emergency Management Exercises Once an emergency response plan is developed, equipment is purchased, and personnel trained to the plan and in the use of equipment, there is a need ensure that a critical level of preparedness has occurred. In actuality, the only true validation of preparedness efforts comes as the result of a response to an actual disaster event. Exercise is a controlled, scenario-driven, simulated experience designed to demonstrate and evaluate an organization's capability to execute one or more assigned or implicit operational tasks or procedures as outlined in its contingency plan. There four types of exercises identified by FEMA: Full-scale Partial-scale Functional Tabletop FEMA supports exercises through the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP), created to provide guidance and standardization to the exercise efforts of emergency management organizations, and to develop a framework for evaluation. HSEEP compliance is required for grant eligibility. The penultimate emergency management exercise series is the DHS-supported National Level Exercise (NLE) program. The NLE program, formerly called TOPOFF (for Top Officials), is a fullscale exercise held once a year that tests response to major disaster events spanning states, regions, and across international borders. Evaluation and Improvement It is through evaluation and assessment that those responsible for response and recovery are best able to refine preparedness capabilities. There are several programs by which emergency management evaluation may be conducted. A select few of the more commonly-encountered include: The Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) The State Preparedness Report (SPR) The Target Capabilities List (TCL) The NIMS Compliance Assistance Support Tool (NIMSCAST) The Disaster Emergency Communications (DEC) Communications Project The Comprehensive Assessment System (CAS) The Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) program Preparedness: A National Effort Emergency and Disaster Preparedness is conducted at all levels of government, but it is through the FEMA National Preparedness (NP) Directorate that a national-level strategy for preparedness is developed, communicated, and supported. NP was established on April 1, 2007 in order to oversee coordination and development of the strategies necessary to achieve these goals, and was established in order to provide preparedness policy and planning guidance, and to help build disaster response capabilities. As a FEMA Directorate, NP has wide leverage to develop and institute preparedness programs that include training courses, national policy development and state/local policy guidance, and the planning and conduct of exercises. The requirements of a national-level preparedness effort are guided by the National Response Framework (NRF), which superseded the National Response Plan (NRP) in January of 2008. The NRF was released to establish a comprehensive, national, all-hazards approach to domestic incident response, and to provide clear guidance over the integration of community, state, tribal and federal response efforts. In order to achieve the capability to conduct the necessary actions prescribed within this framework, FEMA has released a series of doctrine guiding preparedness at a strategic level. Homeland Security Presidential Directive-8 (HSPD-8) directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop a national domestic all-hazards preparedness goal. As part of that effort, in March 2005 DHS released the Interim National Preparedness Goal. This goal was later adapted into what is now the National Preparedness Guidelines. Two other programs maintained by FEMA that help guide national-level preparedness are the Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program (REPP) and the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP). Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process by which businesses prepare for disasters by identifying the risks to their business processes, their facilities, their people, and their information, and take action to reduce that risk. BCP also includes identification and enactment of the processes by which businesses are able to continue to function during periods of disaster such that they are able to remain viable for the long term and so that the products and services that they provide the community and country remain available. BCP is the most effective way for businesses to prepare for emergencies as the process initiates a much greater understanding of how community risk affects the businesses and what will be required of the business. BCP, like all preparedness efforts, increases community-wide resilience as the sooner the business sector is able to get back up and running, the sooner the community is able to recover. In November of 2009, FEMA announced the Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program (PS-Prep), which was mandated by legislation that followed the September 11th 2001 attacks. This process involves the development of preparedness standards, which did not exist previously. BCP, however, is chiefly driven by the private sector itself. For instance, DRI International (DRII), a business continuity planning institute, provides significant guidance on higher education programs on BCP, supports BCP research, and maintains a capacity to enable businesses to selfassess their preparedness capabilities.