Emergency Response Planning

What is emergency response planning?

The emergency response plan constitutes a set of written procedures for dealing with emergencies. The goal of emergency response planning is to minimise the impact of an emergency and to facilitate recovery.

Why is an emergency response plan important?

Why is undertaking the exercise important, though? Developing an emergency response action plan is crucial to minimising (or avoiding) damage (altogether), protecting workers and communities – even saving lives.

Why’s that? Well, planning how to respond to emergencies ensures that all parties involved know what to do when an emergency does happen. And in this age of critical threats, emergencies are likelier to happen than ever.

Not only do emergency response plans help organisations and agencies respond more efficiently, but the emergency response planning process itself often reveals structural deficiencies that can be rectified before emergencies happen in the first place.

But to do so, serious work must be done throughout the lifecycle of emergency preparedness. That lifecycle comprises the following steps:

1. Emergency planning, an ongoing process aimed at reducing the effect of destruction caused by unexpected situations. Emergency planning usually encompasses:
1. Planning and prevention. Focuses on providing protection to limit loss of life and reduce the financial impact of disaster response. Planning, here, includes care, evacuation, and environmental planning, as well as response standards.
2. Risk assessment (more below). The identification of high priority and high-vulnerability areas towards which mitigation and risk management efforts are directed.
3. Mitigation. Comprises actions performed before the disaster, including proactive steps to limit vulnerabilities identified in the risk assessment and address those previously recognised risks to support the disaster response. Mitigation strategies are generally disaster specific.
4. Preparedness. These are the emergency and disaster preparedness measures taken to prepare for a critical incident.
5. Developing a response team. Clearly defining leaders, roles, and responsibilities to address key issues in emergency response.
6. Writing an emergency plan (more below). Detailing the overall strategy for responding to a disaster once it has occurred. The written emergency response plan is usually directed to specific types of disasters. The plan comprises detailed procedures as well as identifies leaders and lists training schedules for the emergency plan to be successfully implemented when the time comes.
2. Emergency response, a time-limited phase focused on executing the contents of the emergency plan as drafted and exercised. Response can encompass facilities as well as a regional and national level planning. The initial concern, however, tends to be fulfilling basic humanitarian needs, such as limiting loss of life. Coordinating efforts across multiple facilities and response actors, particularly when resource demand exceeds capacity, is one of the more difficult aspects of emergency response. Two of the most prolific response tactics are:
1. Shelter in place, i.e., establishing a safe location within the confines of a facility or location and remaining in that place; also includes caring for those injured via the resources that are immediately available.
2. Evacuation, i.e., leaving a facility or region affected by a disaster. In this scenario, resources may be left in place or transferred as soon as possible.
3. Salvage and recovery, this final stage occurs after a determination of the initial response is made, the threat to human life is under control, and efforts are made to begin to return the facility or area to normal operational function. However, in certain scenarios, such as wars and pandemics, salvage and response efforts can last for years.

Emergency response teams

Who executes emergency response planning throughout the above stages? In many outfits, emergency response planning falls under the purview of the larger emergency management hierarchy whose goal it is to make timely, comprehensive, and effective decisions during emergency events.

In most emergency management structures, including the Incident Command System and Australasian Inter-Service Incident Management System, the Incident Commander will sit at the top of this hierarchy. The Incident Commander is the role given final decision-making authority over command and control. The purview of the role also extends to setting up the incident response organisation, as well as activating, escalating, and terminating processes.

Other roles should figure in the command-and-control structure, as well. To be effective, the structure ought to be set up so that that Incident Commander can efficiently delegate authority as dictated by the pace and scale of the incident. Those subordinating roles and responsibilities are likely to cover the following functions:

• Personnel, administration, and finance
• Situation awareness and planning
• Decision making and implementation (i.e., operations)
• Logistics
• Media and press
• Communications and transmission
• Liaising
• Public information
• Safety

The planning section deserves special comment. The head of this section, the Planning Section Chief, collects situation and resources status information, evaluates it, and processes the information for use in developing plans. Other major responsibilities include:

• Collect and manage all incident-relevant operational data
• Supervise preparation of the IAP (Incident Action Plan)
• Provide input to the IC and Operations in preparing the IAP
• Incorporate Traffic, Medical, and Communications Plans and other supporting materials into the IAP
• Conduct and facilitate planning meetings
• Reassign personnel within the ICS organisation
• Compile and display incident status information
• Establish information requirements and reporting schedules for units (e.g., Resources and Situation Units)
• Determine need for specialised resources
• Assemble and disassemble Task Forces and Strike Teams (or law enforcement Resource Teams) not assigned to Operations
• Establish specialised data collection systems as necessary (e.g., weather)
• Assemble information on alternative strategies
• Provide periodic predictions on incident potential
• Report significant changes in incident status
• Oversee preparation of the Demobilisation Plan

Emergency response tools

What emergency response tools are available to the Planning Section Chief? Well, at the Chief’s disposal are Resources, Situation, Documentation, and Demobilisation Units. Each carries out a specific function during the emergency response:

• The Resources Unit maintains statuses of all resources available to Incident Command. They might also provide technical specialists.
• The Situation Unit analyses the situation itself. These analyses not only go up to the Incident Commander but across to the Public Information Officer who broadcasts them out to the public.
• The Documentation Unit handles all log entries recorded during the incident. These logs come in handy during post-incident debriefs; they might even come into play during congressional/parliamentary inquiries.
• The Demobilisation Unit takes care of the last step of the emergency response, i.e., demobilisation and recovery. This unit helps to figure out what will be needed for recovery in the emergency zone.

Emergency response checklist

Indeed, the work the Planning Section does constitutes a continuous process. That process requires integrating planning and response efforts often at large scale, i.e., encompassing local and national programmes.

For that reason, emergency response checklists serve to complement incident action plans; certain emergency management software platforms come equipped with emergency response checklists out of the box. An example of such a checklist is below:

Courtesy: Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety

How do you write an emergency response plan?

The focus of an entity’s operational planning, the emergency response plan is a plan for responding to hazards. The plan defines the scope of necessary emergency preparedness and (broader) emergency management activities for both business-as-usual and complex operations.

What goes in the document? It includes:

• An assignment of responsibilities for the carrying out of specific actions that exceed routine responsibility at projected times and places during an emergency
• A delineation of lines of authority and organisational relationships. Shows how all actions will be coordinated
• A description of how people and property will be protected
• An identification of the personnel, equipment, facilities, supplies, and other resources available to the entity, either within its purview or by agreement with other entities
• (If applicable) A reconciliation of requirements with other entities

What’s more, the precise form the plan takes depends on the needs and specificities of the entity, a product of governmental structure (for public entities) and/or the results of a risk assessment (for everyone else). Provided it fits the entity’s emergency management strategies, policies, resources, and capabilities, the emergency response plan format is a decision taken at the entity level.

Incident management structures rarely prescribe compliance with certain template formats, though policymakers might. What are the most common templates? They include:

Finally, planning before, during, and after an emergency event is crucial to the response effort. That’s why most emergency management organisations (and the frameworks they follow) accord so much responsibility to planning.

Planners are often helped in their role by emergency management software, as well. Platforms like Noggin Emergency give Planning Sections all the tools needed to effectively manage emergencies, through the entire lifecycle of preparation, response, and recovery as well as business-as-usual operations for emergency preparedness and critical infrastructure resilience.

How so?

For starters, these platforms are designed with NIMS/ICS and AIIMS best practices in mind – from standard forms to resource types to infrastructure maps and team structures. Relevant workflows go that critical last mile to automate key steps.

Not only that, but the relevant systems also support user interfaces, simplified to just the tools needed, reducing the cost and need for training. Plans, checklists, and role responsibilities help guide staff, so they can focus on the bigger picture during an incident.

But that’s not even the half of it. See what else Noggin Emergency can do by requesting a demonstration.

Sources:
ICS Organizational Structure and Elements: Extracted from - E/L/G 0300 Intermediate Incident Command System for Expanding Incidents, ICS 300. Available at https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/assets/ics%20organizational%20structure%20and%20elements.pdf.

John R. Harrald and Theresa Jefferson: Shared Situational Awareness in Emergency Management Mitigation and Response. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221182988_Shared_Situational_Awareness_in_Emergency_Management_Mitigation_and_Response.