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?
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Emergency Management Newsletter
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?
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Emergency Management Newsletter, Emergency Operations
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?
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Emergency Management Newsletter
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.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Emergency Management Newsletter, Emergency Operations
Social impact is an important driver of what we do here at Noggin. Our software platform helped organisations respond to the historic 2019/2020 bushfires. And that was before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which is impacting our customers, as well, especially healthcare agencies at the frontline of the epidemic response.
Topics: Crisis Management, Emergency Response, Partner Newsletter
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.
Topics: Emergency Management, Crisis Management, Emergency Response, Crisis Planning, Emergency Management Newsletter
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.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Emergency Management Newsletter
Topics: Crisis Management, Emergency Response, Crisis Plans, Crisis Planning, Crisis Newsletter
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.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management, Emergency Management Newsletter
Emergency managers out there, do you have just one pick for an emergency management conference to attend this year? Then, I’d strongly suggest attending the 2019 IAEM 67th Annual Conference & EMEX – Honor the Past, Treasure the Present and Shape the Future.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Conferences & Events, Emergency Response
For some time now, the research points up clear challenges in interagency response to large-scale emergencies, citing delays in getting assistance and rescue underway, delays in decision making, and lack of clarity in command and control structures, etc. The key question is why, what factors explain the situation on the ground.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response
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.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Emergency Management Newsletter
The premier, comprehensive homeland security event in the nation, the 2019 National Homeland Security Conference brings together an impressive array of homeland security professionals.
Topics: Crisis Management, Incident Management, Security Management, Conferences & Events, Emergency Response
Last Friday’s (March 15) horrific attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch already rank as the deadliest mass shooting incident in New Zealand history. Fifty people were killed, and scores injured in an act of terror unprecedented in the island nation.
Topics: Emergency Management, Crisis Management, Public Safety, Healthcare, Emergency Response, Resource Management
A few weeks ago, the team at Noggin attended the Australian Airports Association (AAA) National Conference, the pre-eminent aviation conference in the Asia-Pacific region. There, we learned all about the latest innovations in airport technology as well as new developments in best-practice principles.
Topics: Emergency Management, Airports, Public Safety, Conferences & Events, Emergency Response
AIIMS is the Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System. The nationally recognized incident management structure in Australia, AIIMS has wide command, control, and coordination applicability in fire, land management, and other emergency situations, as well as for non-emergency incidents.
Topics: Emergency Management, Incident Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response
California is ablaze. Northern California’s Camp Fire has already become the deadliest in the state’s history. The Woolsey fire, rampaging through heavily-populated Los Angeles and Ventura counties, is comparable in size to the city of Denver. For crisis leaders, it’s past time to dust of those corporate crisis plans and get serious about severe weather preparedness.
Topics: Crisis Management, Noggin Crisis, Emergency Response, Crisis Plans, Crisis Planning
If you’re involved in emergency management in the U.S., you’ve probably heard of the Incident Command System (ICS). A key feature of the U.S. National Incident Management System (NIMS), ICS is an operational incident management structure that provides a standardized approach to the command, control, and coordination of emergency response in the U.S.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response
Been managing volunteers, especially disaster response volunteers, for the last few decades? Then, you’ve probably noticed a shift. There’re fewer long-term volunteers; new volunteers are harder to come by than ever; and your base of existing volunteers is serving historically short stints.
Topics: Emergency Management, Public Safety, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
By now, the case for interoperability, especially the efficient transfer of relevant data between agencies – otherwise known as interoperability in information management – is clear. Just take a look at many post-emergency, after-action reports; most cite a lack of interagency cooperation as contributory to mission setbacks, or even failures. Of course, one of the best examples in recent memory: poor interagency cooperation between New York City responders during 11 September.
Topics: Emergency Management, Public Safety, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
When it comes to disaster response, full-time staff usually gets heavy reinforcement from volunteers. Indeed, in the event of an emergency, volunteers, especially spontaneous, converging volunteers, are often the first on the field, providing much-needed first responder support, including search and rescue, first aid, damage and need assessment. It’s also not uncommon that volunteers numerically dominate the response effort. In Australia, for instance, rural fire services often average career staff to volunteer ratios that easily exceed 1:130.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
So far this year, the U.S. has already been hit by six storms, excluding the recent Hurricane Florence, that were each severe enough to inflict at least $1 billion in damages. Together, these storms caused more than thirty deaths.
Hurricane Florence—which recently struck the Southeast U.S. leading to severe flooding in the Carolinas—caused an estimated $20 billion in damages, possibly higher given that estimates on the monetary cost are still being estimated, and led to more than forty deaths.
Topics: Crisis Management, Emergency Response, Crisis Planning
Resources and capabilities go hand in hand. Your team’s capabilities prove the crucial variable to success in the field. In other words, managing one (resources) without considering the other (capabilities) is a surefire way to undermine the success of your mission.
Topics: Emergency Management, Public Safety, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
To be successful, incident managers need to get materials, supplies, technologies, and especially responders to the emergency site as quickly and efficiently as possible. But those same managers will tell you that getting resources to the right place at the right time is only half the battle. Attention also needs to be paid to ensuring the productivity of those resources once they reach the disaster. Here, however, managers and dispatchers confront capability roadblocks to effective resource management.
Topics: Emergency Management, Incident Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
One of the great unknowns, severe weather happens everywhere, at any time, causing untold devastation often with little to no advanced warning.
Topics: Crisis Management, Noggin Crisis, Critical Issues Management, Emergency Response, Crisis Plans, Crisis Planning
When it comes to incident and emergency response, effectively managing resources couldn’t be more important. Resources, i.e. materials, supplies, facilities, technologies, even people, are assets in every sense of the word. But they don’t get the job done in isolation. That’s where capabilities come in.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
If you take a bird’s eye view, the state of volunteerism seems pretty healthy. The volunteer rate in the U.S., for instance, stands at around 63 million people, roughly a quarter of the total population. And that’s only a few basis points down from the 29 percent that government statisticians recorded when they first started tracking rates of volunteerism back in the early 2000s. The importance of those volunteers to the health of the economy (not to mention the mission of their nonprofit organizations) can’t be overstated either. Some estimates show that volunteers contribute upwards of $150 billion in services.
Photo by MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
Welcome to our newest blog series ‘Get to know Noggin OCA’. This series will highlight features of our enterprise resilience software platform, Noggin OCA, that help all types of business manage disruption, smarter. The next 4 blogs will focus on the key features that help organizations efficiently and effectively manage resources during an emergency.
Photo by Matt More/FEMA [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Efficiently deploying resources in time-sensitive emergency situations isn’t easy. Just take search-and-rescue (SAR). Time is absolutely crucial in those operations, as the possibility of success rapidly dwindles with the passing of days, if not hours.
Topics: Emergency Management, Emergency Task Management, Emergency Response, Resource Management
