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Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response
MacKay Emergency Management Consulting Inc. is providing support for a Hazmat response aid known as A Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response (DA) by providing an on line web presence for it. Under the domain DA2ER.info, a web site, blog, discussion group and Twitter account have been created to help provide collaboration among DA users and to raise awareness about the DA process.
So you may ask, why are we involved with DA? William MacKay, President of MacKay Emergency Management Consulting Inc. was involved in the development of the DA process and a DA flowchart and provided coordination for upgrades of the charts and training material for many years until his retirement as Emergency Response Advisor from Imperial Oil Limited. His retirement left a coordination gap, which has existed for several years, that he hopes putting DA on the web will help fill. If you are aware of any Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response users or anyone the process may benefit, please direct them to the DA2ER.info web site.
The purpose of the Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response is to help protect lives, property and the environment in an efficient manner during response to an emergency incident. Although DA was developed specifically to aid response to incidents involving hazardous materials / dangerous goods, the principles involved can be applied effectively to most types of incidents.
So you may ask, why are we involved with DA? William MacKay, President of MacKay Emergency Management Consulting Inc. was involved in the development of the DA process and a DA flowchart and provided coordination for upgrades of the charts and training material for many years until his retirement as Emergency Response Advisor from Imperial Oil Limited. His retirement left a coordination gap, which has existed for several years, that he hopes putting DA on the web will help fill. If you are aware of any Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response users or anyone the process may benefit, please direct them to the DA2ER.info web site.
The purpose of the Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response is to help protect lives, property and the environment in an efficient manner during response to an emergency incident. Although DA was developed specifically to aid response to incidents involving hazardous materials / dangerous goods, the principles involved can be applied effectively to most types of incidents.
Some of the benefits of using the Disciplined Approach to Emergency Response while responding to an incident are:
- It provides a data gathering and decision making process to aid responders in handling emergencies in a logical and methodical manner
- It provides a common process to assist responders with different backgrounds and training to focus on effective incident analysis and management
- It provides a process to facilitate management by objectives within an incident management system
- It provides a checklist to ensure important aspects of a response are not overlooked
Crisis Kitchen - On Line Community Support for Haiti Earthquake
For the past week I have been participating in the Crisis Kitchen, an on line community set up to support response to the Haiti earthquake. The Crisis Kitchen has been set up with the support of Igloo Software from Kitchener, is coordinated by Hal Newman the Founder and Managing Partner of TEMS [social media for emergency management] and currently has just over 100 emergency management personnel and professionals from a wide range of backgrounds participating.
On line communities such as the Crisis Kitchen can be a valuable resource for those responsible for emergency management and business continuity programs and even to support response to a specific emergency. The Crisis Kitchen basically provides a password protected central (web) meeting place where participants can view various up to date media streams and information sources about the Haiti earthquake and response. It provides various ways for participants to add to the pool of information about the incident and the response, identify specific needs and record suggestions on options to meet those needs. The system provides profiles on all participants and provision for participants to be notified by e-mail about any discussion group in which they have particular interest.
The system is being fine tuned as it is being used to adapt it to the needs of the participants and this particular emergency.
I believe there is significant potential value for on line communities to support emergency management, but, like most other resources, to be most effective they need to be set up well before they are needed, participants need to be trained and familiar with the structure and processes and know their roles and responsibilities. Thanks to Igloo software and Hal Newman for their efforts.
On line communities such as the Crisis Kitchen can be a valuable resource for those responsible for emergency management and business continuity programs and even to support response to a specific emergency. The Crisis Kitchen basically provides a password protected central (web) meeting place where participants can view various up to date media streams and information sources about the Haiti earthquake and response. It provides various ways for participants to add to the pool of information about the incident and the response, identify specific needs and record suggestions on options to meet those needs. The system provides profiles on all participants and provision for participants to be notified by e-mail about any discussion group in which they have particular interest.
The system is being fine tuned as it is being used to adapt it to the needs of the participants and this particular emergency.
I believe there is significant potential value for on line communities to support emergency management, but, like most other resources, to be most effective they need to be set up well before they are needed, participants need to be trained and familiar with the structure and processes and know their roles and responsibilities. Thanks to Igloo software and Hal Newman for their efforts.
University College, School Emergency Management # 2
This blog highlight some factors one should consider for university, college or school emergency management and provides some links to resources. These may be of interest to persons responsible for emergency management programs and for parents of students who may want to consider the emergency management capability of an educational facility as one of the factors when selecting the institution your child will attend. The quality of education offered is important but the safety of ones child is more important.
Leading emergency management standards such as CSA Z1600 and NFPA 1600 require educational institutions to not only plan for emergencies but to address prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Some key requirements from these standards and highlights from a recent conference I attended are provided below.
GENERAL
- Those in authority may be vicariously liable for their actions and inaction when it comes to emergency management
- Developing ones emergency management program to recognized standards will result in better programs and help mitigate liability
- Networking with emergency management peers / professionals provides a good source of information ( IAEM OAEM )
PREVENTION / MITIGATION
- Limit your exposure by developing programs to current standards and best practices - CSA Z1600 and NFPA 1600
- Understand the hazards and risks for each specific location and plan accordingly. Some risk related resources are Alp & Associates,
- Consider using Crime Stoppers as a prevention strategy where the program provides this service
- Actively use social media to such as Facebook & My Space to build relationships between staff and students to identify and diffuse
potential risks
- Share incident statistics with authorities, other schools and parents to better understand the problem.
- Disclosure of incident statistics is required in the US by the Cleary Act . Could Canada benefit from similar reporting?
PREPAREDNESS
- Understand communications requirements - Implement and test appropriate systems and procedures. Good guidance in Z1600.
- Develop and exercise lock down procedures
- Develop incident management systems to control and coordinate response operations
- York University virtual emergency exercises using Second Life - an interesting concept for emergency exercises
RESPONSE
- Implement response plans and procedures developed during the preparedness phase
- University of Texas at Austin - examples of emergency plans
RECOVERY
- Conduct post incident debrief and analysis to ensure lessons learned are incorporated into revised plans and procedures
This blog complements tweets by memci on school emergency management on Twitter. It is far from a complete list of emergency program requirements but I hope it provided some food for thought.
University, College & School Emergency Management # 1
I had the privilege of developing and delivering a presentation on the importance of emergency management standards for university, college and school emergency management plans and programs. The presentation highlighted how standards are useful for evaluating existing emergency management programs or developing new ones. A condensed 6 minute YouTube video of the presentation highlights the key points. The complete PowerPoint presentation may be downloaded on Slide Share using a link provided in the video.
This topic should be of interest to persons responsible for or involved with emergency planning in education institutions and to parents who have children in school, college or university.
The Strategy Institute has been offering the "Emergency & Disaster Planning for Colleges, Universities and K-12 Schools" conference for the past six years and I recommend considering the 2010 conference for personnel involved in this field.
I am currently working on a Twitter" series on university, college and school emergency management which should begin in the next week or so. Follow memci on Twitter to receive these emergency management tips.
"Tweeting" Through NFPA 1600
I use Twitter daily to share emergency management ( bit.ly/QH2X5 ) and business continuity ( http://bit.ly/15u4y3 ) tips ( http://twitter.com/memci ). I have also found Twitter to be a good source of information as more emergency management professionals and programs use social media ( http://bit.ly/14v0Q ) to raise awareness about their programs.
I find emergency management standards to be of significant value for developing new programs and for evaluating existing programs. Because of this I have decided to issue a series of "tweets" on Twitter to raise awareness about these standards and the benefits of using them . As a member of the Canadian Standards Asociation Technical Committee that wrote the CSA Z1600 standard for emergency management and business continuity programs ( http://bit.ly/12rYRk ) I highly recommend it, but for the purpose of this project I will be using the NFPA 1600 standard ( http://bit.ly/BriV8 ). I have chosen NFPA 1600 because it is available as a free download and I felt folks on Twitter may be more inclined to act on a recommendation involving a free download to begin thinking about their needs for a program.
I hope you find the "tweets" of value and I encourage you to begin evaluating the benefits of developing an emergency management and business continuity program for your business or organization. Small business and organizations need a program, as much if not more, than large organizations because they are more vulnerable and less likely to survive a serious incident. I encourage you to download and read the NFPA 1600 standard. If you require assistance please contact me. A little remote assistance may be all you need to start developing a basic program. (http://memci.ca )
I find emergency management standards to be of significant value for developing new programs and for evaluating existing programs. Because of this I have decided to issue a series of "tweets" on Twitter to raise awareness about these standards and the benefits of using them . As a member of the Canadian Standards Asociation Technical Committee that wrote the CSA Z1600 standard for emergency management and business continuity programs ( http://bit.ly/12rYRk ) I highly recommend it, but for the purpose of this project I will be using the NFPA 1600 standard ( http://bit.ly/BriV8 ). I have chosen NFPA 1600 because it is available as a free download and I felt folks on Twitter may be more inclined to act on a recommendation involving a free download to begin thinking about their needs for a program.
I hope you find the "tweets" of value and I encourage you to begin evaluating the benefits of developing an emergency management and business continuity program for your business or organization. Small business and organizations need a program, as much if not more, than large organizations because they are more vulnerable and less likely to survive a serious incident. I encourage you to download and read the NFPA 1600 standard. If you require assistance please contact me. A little remote assistance may be all you need to start developing a basic program. (http://memci.ca )
A Simple Approach to Social Networking
A lot has been said about the importance of "Social Networking" and the need for entities to understand and use it, but for those new to the subject this can be a confusing task. I am sharing my symplistic approach to using it in the hope that it may help others.
WHY BOTHER WITH IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? From my perspective, it helps me keep up to date on what is being said about my company and a number of subjects that are important to my business and secondly it helps me collaborate with other professionals on those topics and enables me to provide input to help others and contrubute to the emergency management and busines continuity profesion. It simply helps me gather useful information and helps me provide information.
GATHERING INFORMATION: This process is partly automated and partly manual. I set up Google Alerts ( http://www.google.com/alerts ) to automatically send me information, text and videos, via e-mail about my company and a number of subjects ( CSA Z1600, NFPA 1600, EMAP and emergency incidents etc. ) that are of interest to me. I also recieve e-mail updates to any discussion topics of interest in the emergency management groups on the Linked In ( http://www.linkedin.com ) professional network. I use TweetDeck ( http://www.tweetdeck.com ) to follow information from a number of organizations and individuals on Twitter ( http://twitter.com ) and to search Twitter for subjects of interest. TweetDck will consolidate Twitter and Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com ) postings if Facebook is part of your social networking strategy. I periodically check You Tube (http://www.youtube.com ) for emergency management related videos and maintain a categorized list of videos of interest in my You Tube account.
PROVIDING INFORMATION: In addition to sharing general information about my company and the services we provide on my web site ( http://memci.ca ) and on my Linked in profile ( http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammackay ) I try to contribute to topics of interest in discussion groups sponsored by the Ontario Association of Emergency Managers ( http://www.oaem.ca ), International Association of Emergency Managers (http://www.iaem.com ), Disaster Recovery Information Exchange ( http://www.drie.org ) and other discussion groups of interest all of which are hosted on Linked in (http://www.linkedin.com ) As I come across emergency management and business continuity or technology items of interest during my work I try to share them as memci on a daily basis basis on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/memci ). These "Tweets" which are less than 140 characters usually link to another web site or document or to this Blog to provide more detailed information.
It likely goes beyond the simple approach but MEMCI.TV (http://memci.tv ) is a work in progress in collaboration with my associates to take our information sharing and collaboration to the next level. Hope you found this information useful. I look forward to receiving your feedback.
WHY BOTHER WITH IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? From my perspective, it helps me keep up to date on what is being said about my company and a number of subjects that are important to my business and secondly it helps me collaborate with other professionals on those topics and enables me to provide input to help others and contrubute to the emergency management and busines continuity profesion. It simply helps me gather useful information and helps me provide information.
GATHERING INFORMATION: This process is partly automated and partly manual. I set up Google Alerts ( http://www.google.com/alerts ) to automatically send me information, text and videos, via e-mail about my company and a number of subjects ( CSA Z1600, NFPA 1600, EMAP and emergency incidents etc. ) that are of interest to me. I also recieve e-mail updates to any discussion topics of interest in the emergency management groups on the Linked In ( http://www.linkedin.com ) professional network. I use TweetDeck ( http://www.tweetdeck.com ) to follow information from a number of organizations and individuals on Twitter ( http://twitter.com ) and to search Twitter for subjects of interest. TweetDck will consolidate Twitter and Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com ) postings if Facebook is part of your social networking strategy. I periodically check You Tube (http://www.youtube.com ) for emergency management related videos and maintain a categorized list of videos of interest in my You Tube account.
PROVIDING INFORMATION: In addition to sharing general information about my company and the services we provide on my web site ( http://memci.ca ) and on my Linked in profile ( http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammackay ) I try to contribute to topics of interest in discussion groups sponsored by the Ontario Association of Emergency Managers ( http://www.oaem.ca ), International Association of Emergency Managers (http://www.iaem.com ), Disaster Recovery Information Exchange ( http://www.drie.org ) and other discussion groups of interest all of which are hosted on Linked in (http://www.linkedin.com ) As I come across emergency management and business continuity or technology items of interest during my work I try to share them as memci on a daily basis basis on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/memci ). These "Tweets" which are less than 140 characters usually link to another web site or document or to this Blog to provide more detailed information.
It likely goes beyond the simple approach but MEMCI.TV (http://memci.tv ) is a work in progress in collaboration with my associates to take our information sharing and collaboration to the next level. Hope you found this information useful. I look forward to receiving your feedback.
Technology - To Use or Not To Use?
As emergency management and business continuity professionals, technology can help us develop our individual capabilities and help us develop more effective programs. I must admit I have a bias in favor of using technology but I wonder, as a profession, if we are using it as effectively as we could? Collaboration among professionals helps us develop ourselves and our programs and to an extent this is happening, but much of the time it is happening within fairly narrow professional silos. This collaboration would be more effective if it took place on a broader scale across the various professions involved in managing emergencies and business continuity and if, where possible, it included the public.
I am encouraged by the range of easy to use technologies that are becoming available to facilitate broad networking and collaboration and academic research to help fine tune these technologies to make them more effective. I am, however, somewhat discouraged by the level of participation on available discussion forums and other projects. I reflect back to the day when as an Incident Commander of an emergency team there was a challenge to get team members to use e-mail.
My questions to you are: Are we sufficiently using technology effectively within our profession? If so how are we? if not, where are we falling short? If there is a gap what is required to motivate us as professionals to network and collaborate more effectively?
Emergency Management & Business Continuity Stakeholders
I am working on a project to help a client better understand who all the emergency management and business continuity stakeholders are and their roles or interests in having effective emergency management and business continuity programs. I posted one example on my web site ( www.memci.tv/MEMCI.TV/Stakeholders.html ). I actually envision two diagrams similar to the rough sample on the web site; one illustrating who the players are and another illustrating the contributions various stakeholders make towards emergency management and business continuity.
I am focusing primarily on Canada but I would certainly appreciate any thoughts or examples of diagrams which have been used to illustrate emergency management ad business continuity stakeholders relationships in other parts of the world.
WHY I SET UP THIS PODCAST / BLOG SERVICE
Setting up this podcast / blog feature is part of my vision to have a web based facility to help me share and exchange information with other emergency management and business continuity professionals and to assist clients and others who require help setting up or improving their emergency management and business continuity programs.