The Noggin Blog

The goal of emergency planning is to build a robust emergency response capability before a disaster even happens. However, disasters have a way of going against plan. That’s when organisations have to scramble and build out incident plans. Of course, the incident planning process isn’t without its own challenges. One of the biggest is incident assessment. 

2020 was the year of the pandemic. But though COVID-19 garnered the headlines, 22 other disasters shattered records. Cumulatively, those billion-dollar disasters might say more about the future of emergency management than anything else.

What exactly? 

Emergency managers are well acquainted with the after action review, a qualitative evaluation of actions taken to respond to a given emergency. A staple of the recovery process, the after action review provides the best means of identifying best practices, gaps, and lessons learned, so as to respond better next time.

However, the COVID-19 crisis was a shock to the system. Normal processes were upended; plans turned out to be inadequate. How to do better next time? 

In this age of COVID-19, all-hazards planning has never been more integral to effective major event management. But the size of these events (including major disasters) means planning is often parceled out between a diverse set of stakeholders, potentially increasing operational risk. What, then, is needed to mitigate risk and enhance major-event emergency response capabilities? 

Even in the age of COVID-19, getting resources to the right place at the right time is still only half the battle. Relief organisations and agencies still confront barriers, ensuring that those resources are productive once on site. What’s one of the most difficult, and how to overcome it? 

The emergency threat has grown like never before. Natural disasters alone have increased ten-fold since the 1960s.

Add in an unprecedented pandemic, and these figures only up the ante on the need for not just any emergency management platform but the right emergency management platform. What capabilities matter in this age of disasters? 

From tornadoes to floods to explosions, emergency agencies bring experts together in emergency operations centers (EOCs) to manage and coordinate operations. Before the pandemic, they did so largely in person. The risk (and reality) of infection, however, has forced EOCs to go virtual – out of necessity.  

Makeshift affairs, many of these virtual emergency operations centers (VEOC) are virtual in name only. How, then, to get the most out of your VEOC?

In this age of increasing emergency threats, informal volunteer emergency workers often provide critical first responder help, usually search and rescue, first aid, damage, and need assessment.

But because they tend to lack pre-established relationships with emergency managers, informal volunteers can also pose operational risks. Dispatchers, for one, can’t verify training or credentials, so they are unable to accurately match volunteer skills with service areas. And that’s not the only management challenge relief organisations face. What are they?

With the double-whammy of COVID-19 and a hyper-active weather season, volunteer disaster relief agencies already have enough on their plate. But the rapid increase in the number and severity of disasters is causing a worrying new phenomenon in volunteer management.

That trend is disaster fatigue. What is it, and how to plan for it this coming severe weather season?

Mere days into the hurricane season, the Atlantic basin is already experiencing its third named storm. Meanwhile, China, faced with flooding in its south and east, is upping flood defense emergency response to level III. Western Australia, for its part, is less than a month removed from a “once-in-a-decade storm,” so dubbed by the state’s acting commissioner of Fire and Emergency Services.

In the past, emergency management agencies and other organizations might have become accustomed to bleak forecasts of powerful hurricane seasons – like the one they received this year. They’ve never, however, had to prepare for an “above-normal” storm season while simultaneously fighting a “once-in-a-generation pathogen.” How can they beef up critical infrastructure resilience to respond to multiple events at once?

The Incident Command System sprung out of a fire suppression event in the 1970s. But it didn’t take too long for non-fire organizations to begin using the system, as well.

The question is now as emergency response agencies mobilize against the COVID-19 pandemic, can ICS be relevant to their efforts?

Physical EOCs (Emergency Operations Centers) have proliferated in recent years. And it’s easy to see why. Physical EOCs help teams, individual organizations, and multiple agencies working in concert mobilize people and equipment for incident responses lasting the entirety of an emergency.

As of mid-February, over 64,000 cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have been reported, with wartime measures increasingly becoming the norm throughout mainland China. The reach of the coronavirus, however, is global. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared a public health emergency of international concern.

Disaster relief agencies might be heartened by the volunteer recruitment spikes they experience during moments of crisis, like the rolling bushfire disasters. But according to the data, those spikes are temporary. In other words, organizations relying on long-term resource gains from reliable volunteers will probably have to look elsewhere. Where to? The answer might surprise you. 

According to CNBC reporting, the average number of yearly billion-dollar disasters totalled 15 events from 2016 to 2018. The average yearly total for the previous 38 years: 6.2 events. And this year’s disaster season, with its deadly storms, heatwaves, and, of course, wildfires, is all but certainly trending in the wrong direction.

No doubt about it, volunteer disaster and emergency response agencies have seen enormous strides in emergency management software systems and incident management technology. But have those gains kept up with the unprecedented rise in natural disasters and other emergencies?

Been involved in large-scale disaster response? Then, you know all about the unique challenges of interagency operations, from delays in getting assistance and rescue underway to lack of clarity in command and control structures once on the ground, plus variable decision making throughout.

Just last month, Hurricane Dorian cut a destructive path through the Bahamas. As a historic category-5 hurricane, the storm leveled the Abaco Islands, leaving a rising death toll of 53 with more than 1,000 people missing.

During an incident, emergency managers need to deploy materials, supplies, technologies, and people to the emergency site as quickly and efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, getting resources to the right place at the right time is only half the battle.