As emergency management leaders for the 21st century, we need to develop new risk assessment and management models to factor in the “unthinkable” globally impacting ‘black swam’ type events, using satellite imagery, and all the other technology and resources available to better enable us to forecast and plan for these type of events, with the view to minimize their impacts. These technologies should be globally linked, like a global warning system similar to a Tsunami early warning system. According to Mileti there several things that can be done to facilitate this paradigm shift in thinking in leadership in emergency management. He is of the view that there needs to be an adaptation of a global systems perspective in addressing …show more content…
By virtue of the fact that these events are able to disable entire systems, nationally, regionally or worst globally a gigantic collaborative effort by all countries is required to address these issues.
How can this be done?
There needs to be a paradigm shift on several fronts. Firstly there needs to be shift in the education system, where leadership is taught separately from the principles of management and this needs to be translated as seen particularly at the strategic levels of leadership especially as it relates to emergency management. Emergency management leadership should adopt a global system perspectives paying special attention to social forces and their role in amplifying hazards and disasters. This new approach must foster long term thinking and planning for the reduction of losses in lives and infrastructure for present and future generations. These plans must be reviewed and adjusted as the environment and situation changes to ensure sustainability. Emergency management should be a mandatory component for any type of territory education for all aspiring leaders. This approach will increase future leaders and managers knowledge about the subject matter and encourage a greater appreciation of their role in this very integrated process of emergency management, thus making the job of emergency managers in terms of acquiring the needed resources to execute our jobs somewhat less
An emergency is sometimes used interchangeably with disaster, which is a state in which normal practices are put off, and extraordinary measures are taken to prevent a catastrophe. A disaster, on the other hand, is an incident upsetting the normal conditions of being and causing a level of suffering that surpasses the capacity of change to the affected community. Emergency management offers the institutional arrangement and conceptual basis to handle increasing complexity and uncertainty in the weather. As such, most sectors of society now integrate emergency management approaches and principles into their adaptation planning. Emergency managers should apply climate research data to focus emergency mitigation, preparedness, and response actions for their communities. However, immediate challenges that might prevail include preparing for frequent or heavy precipitation and flooding, more intense storms, droughts, heat waves and higher seal level.
Systems must be interdisciplinary: Emergency management systems and crisis intervention systems must rely heavily on a broad spectrum of people that range from sanitation workers to civil engineers to medical personnel, to psychologists, ministers, and economists.
The various local, state, and federal emergency management systems of the United States suffered a crude awakening in the decade of the 2000s. Systems expected to hold up were put to the test and failed to prepare for disaster, mitigate the damage, and, in some instances, actually hampered responses in life-or-death situations. Worse, all failings were highlighted in an age of global communication and mass media, on display first whether a man-made incident like September 11th attacks or natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. The decade found the complacent government failing to maintain modern emergency management practices, stimulating began a series of doctrinal upgrades and training improvements. Yet, no matter the bureaucracy, writings, or money thrown at a problem, the first responder to the incident has and will continue to influence the outcome. While the individual responder stands as the most important part of
There are many ways to describe emergency management and the importance of the tasks emergency managers perform. Indeed, in
Natural and man-made disasters have increased in the past decade, and due to these changes, Emergency Managers had to make drastic changes in order to improve the way first responders operate in a disaster area.
Two specific areas of concern are noted in the majority of studies conducted. The first area of concern was that there was not a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities or organizational leaders (Haddow et al., 2014, p. 322). Since this event this has been an area that has shown considerable improvement. This has been accomplished through the use of NIMS and collaborative efforts of first responder leaders to craft an all hazards model of response. By doing both of these things, partner agencies are better able to fold into the rescue
Current in the United States there is a huge impact form weather, starting with Hurricane Harvey and know Hurricane Irma. These two storms have tested and taxed the Emergency Response teams as well as the Emergency Management Teams on a Local, State and Federal Level. Hurricane Harvey came ashore in Texas, causing wide spread power outages, causing residents to evacuate their homes and overall disrupted the entire states and many parts of the country. With Hurricane Irma, we are seeing much of the same things on even a large scale. As Emergency Management we need to focus on the many different aspects of Preparation, Previous events and be able to employee the last technologies to help our residents, Family and
Thus, in emergency management, to enhance the agency’s vision, changes may arise from policies and procedures, technology advancement, and equipment, shift in priorities, increase on mitigation and prevention measures, and methodologies among many others. This therefore demands that leadership in the emergency management must possess the ability to lead changes as requires since emergency management itself has to do with prepared for and responding to disasters or crisis that take place often with little to no warnings with the expectation to respond with adequate preparation. Hence, the emergency management employees and the leadership who want to be successful in dealing with disasters must learn to respond swiftly and effectively to changes; “an effective leader is able to motivate and inspire others to embrace change” (FEMA, 2005, p.
As a new (OES) Office of Emergency Service Leader I think that my first agenda should be to effectively understand the relationships between the community, the organization and the stakeholders. Why? Because being able to understand how the system works will enable of our organization meet the challenges of the OES changes. While it is important for my leadership style, which is Servant style I need to remember to open the doors of communication with OES employment staff. This is necessary if we plan to accomplish OES agency objectives. But to do this we will have to discuss how our organization will work effectively with “the local government, businesses, social, federal agencies, and with state and economic influential and hazards practitioners.
In “Wither the Emergency Manager,” Niel R. Britton comments on Drabek's “Human Responses to disaster: An Inventory of Sociological Findings.” Britton describes six positive and negative issues in emergency management as it is today. In this paper, we will discuss the implications on emergency management as a field and on the individual manager.
Emergency management faces many challenges in today’s modern society. In the years prior to 9/11 emergency management was primarily focused on natural disasters. That has since changed; we now face a diverse variety of risks and hazards on a constant basis. As we continue to grow in population current and newer have compounded into more problems that emergency planner must face and find solutions for.
The word leadership can have many interpretations or meanings to different people. Some people might argue that leadership or a leader is someone in power of a particular title status. Other people might say a leader is a person of seniority or an inherited position in a hierarchy. Although, a leader might befit these descriptions; an effective leader in emergency management must possess certain sets of qualities that is both captivating and influential. According to Kevin Kruse from Forbes magazine “Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others towards a goal” (2013). Thus, effective leaders in emergency management must possess core qualities that enable them to create influence within an organized team that seeks to obtain safety and quality.
This emergence of social media has also changed emergency management and disaster response. Emergency management as a whole is fairly new, only creating widely recognized, integrated emergency management systems beginning in the 1970s. Furthermore, at this same time people realized that the effects disasters have on the communities they strike can be mitigated by the creation of disaster plans ahead of time, proper disaster response training, and the efforts of human actions in these situations. Because social media has enabled mass amounts of instant information sharing, it allows not only locals and disaster response teams to help with the management of crises, but also many remote citizens.
Risk for disasters is a part of life; emergency situations occur more frequently than many people believe. A wise person plans for the worse, and hopes for the best. After a disaster, how well a community can recover will depend largely on how well they prepared in advance. Risk management includes identifying any potential risks to a community and proactively planning to minimize the threat. Proactive organization of resources and people to respond to emergencies can mean the difference between a community’s ability to regroup and recover, and the loss of life. To better
Effective warning systems (EWS) and disaster reduction strategies are still not a natural component to disaster management and risk reduction globally. In the developing world, there is a shortage of equipment, skills and resources, and a number of isolated communities with little or no access to technology. In developed countries, there is a lack of consensus on the ‘right’ way to handle disaster situations.