Journal of Emergency Management最新文献

The objective of this article is to understand how emergency managers view the status of their emergency management programs and identify suggestions on how to improve this important profession in the future. This article first explores the hazards, vulnerabilities, and associated disasters confronting select jurisdictions in Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VIII. It then explains recent experiences of responding to the coronavirus disease 2019, the 2020 protests/riots, the Magna earthquake, and the Marshall Fire. The article also mentions the relative priority given to preparedness and mitigation and recovery activities, and it discusses common challenges and weaknesses emergency managers face. The article then concludes with a discussion of current activities as well as concerns and recommendations for the future.

Resilience is a complex concept. In the emergency management community, it is commonly used as a synonym for reduced risk. However, research demonstrates that reducing risk is not required for resilience. Research also finds that risk perception, widely viewed as the driver of increased resilience, is a weak predictor of risk reduction action. This article explores the concept of disaster risk tolerance (DRT). DRT is proposed as a better lens for understanding decisions made around risk reduction and as providing a better understanding of the role of resilience. The article also looks at the role of key factors, such as social identity and efficacy, in DRT. It makes recommendations for better risk communication based on these understandings.

Federal appropriation for disaster prevention through recovery occurs across a complex landscape of funding mechanisms. Emergency supplemental appropriations are one such mechanism and increasingly a way that Congress funds disasters. These bills also often include nondisaster-related spending. To better identify congressional tendencies in the use of emergency appropriations for disasters, including the frequency and dollar value of such spending, we analyzed publicly available data on emergency appropriations over the first two decades of the 21st century. Using legislative appropriations data from the Congressional Budget Office for all supplemental appropriations enacted for fiscal years 2000 through 2020, we calculated that nondefense spending for disasters via supplemental appropriation represented USD 1.024 trillion in budget authority across 40 bills over this period. Natural disaster emergencies accounted for 58 percent of the federal government's emergency supplemental spending, with the rest generally related to Global War on Terror and other military activities. Among the spending prompted by presidential request, the difference between how much funding the president had requested for that emergency (if any) and a congressional appropriation of emergency funding reveals no apparent trend over the time period studied, although confirmatory analysis is obscured by a dearth of data points. As the risk of disasters and, particularly, the rate and size of billion-dollar disasters increases, characterizing the congressional approach to the funding of disasters may allow improved understanding of whether this approach is optimized to meet the needs of disasters in the 21st century and whether response spending should be mitigated through proactive and routine appropriations toward resilience targets.

Introduction: Response to infectious diseases-related events may present a challenge to cooperative disaster management and emergency preparedness strategies. The primary objective of this investigation was to identify areas of strength and areas needing improvement in emergency management (EM) coordination between public health (PH) and infection prevention (IP) officials during disasters. A secondary objective was to evaluate education and training among EM, PH, and IP as they relate to increasing the number of mutually supportive relationships.

Methods: An eight-question survey was conducted among individuals working in New Jersey with responsibilities in PH, EM, and IP to identify themes and the current state of collaboration.

Results: The results of this survey suggested that more dedicated personnel in EM are needed for effective health system disaster planning.

Conclusion: Stronger disaster response action plans can only be achieved through improvements in collaboration among stakeholders in EM, PH, and IP. These partnerships are essential to control disease transmission and protect the public from preventable harm.

Introduction: At the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), many healthcare institutions activated the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) to manage their pandemic response. The current literature includes numerous case reports describing individual institutional responses. This paper serves to synthesize the various lessons learned published in the current literature.

Methods: This systematic review consists of articles identified by searching three online databases: PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The authors used the search themes "Hospital Incident Command System" and "COVID" to identify articles to screen for inclusion. Finally, 12 articles published between 2020 and July 2022 met the inclusion criteria and were selected for review.

Results: Eight articles (66.7 percent) discussed how the HICS improved communication within their organization. Eight articles (66.7 percent) described unique modifications to the HICS structure that enabled the organization to adapt to the challenges of the pandemic. The flexibility of the HICS allowed each individual organization to modify its structure to best respond to COVID-19. These modifications improved internal communication between hospital leadership, staff, and the community. Implementation of the HICS helped organizations to streamline communication by preventing information overload.

Conclusion: In conclusion, the HICS provided healthcare institutions with a flexible structure to effectively tailor their emergency response to the unique challenges within their institution and the local community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had dramatic impacts throughout the United States (US). In Cameron County, Texas, along the Texas-Mexico border, the impacts of the virus were felt more severely than in most places in the US. Residents of the county, which has high rates of poverty, many multigenerational households, high levels of underlying conditions, and an uninsured population of almost 30 percent, were not only poised to be affected by the virus but also by the response policies put in place to contain it. This study seeks to add to the literature by examining the lived experiences of low-income individuals in Cameron County, Texas, as it relates to the COVID-19 response and their experiences with the response. To do this, we asked: How did the COVID-19 response affect low-income residents in Cameron County, Texas?

Deaf people who use signed languages are a cultural and linguistic minority. Previous studies involving healthcare and emergency medical service professionals and their interactions with deaf people within the United States and globally have demonstrated a disconnect and lack of trust. The researchers, in this study, explored an emergency preparedness and mass casualty response with deaf people at a university-run mass casualty simulation. Seven culturally deaf high school students from a local deaf school participated in this simulation. Deaf student responses on the survey reflected their experiences involving poor communication skills between health professionals, first responders, and deaf students. By adopting the whole community approach, the students' experiences reinforce the need to include cultural and linguistic education training led by deaf people to increase communication skills among health professionals and first responders in supporting deaf people in emergencies.

Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) are locations from where activities are conducted in support of emergency incident response, including management of information flows/communications and coordination of strategic decision-making and activities across diverse communities and organizations. To date, knowledge is limited about practices involved in structuring and operating EOCs at public offices of emergency management (OEMs) and influencing factors. Through surveys and analysis of organizational documents, this study examines the models used by OEMs and the factors that influence the choice of models and organizational perception of the effectiveness of the employed models. Our results indicate that the emergency support function (ESF) model is the most commonly used, followed by a hybrid model, the incident command system model, and finally, the departmental structure and incident support model. We found no single model to be decisively superior; rather, different models are appropriate depending on personnel, resource availability, and the context of the jurisdiction. The ESF model, which is the most commonly utilized, appears to be difficult to employ effectively when organizations have limited access to trained personnel necessary for carrying out the range of functions specified in the model. In comparison, other models appear better suited to handle personnel constraints.

The rapid breakout and dissemination of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection from the city of Wuhan, China, to the rest of the countries of the world in December 2019 triggered a situation that led the World Health Organization to report it as a global public health emergency. The pandemic resulted in abrupt and significant loss of lives, disruption of economies, loss of livelihoods, and severe hardship across the nations of the world. Nigeria encountered the COVID-19 reality following the discovery of the first case of the infection in the country on February 27, 2020, prompting the government to swing into action to contain its spread. However, the government's response to the pandemic benefited from the support of nonstate actors from the profit and nonprofit sectors. This study, thus, specifically examined the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Nigeria's response to the coronavirus crisis. Using data obtained through secondary sources and analysis of thematic and descriptive-interpretive methods, the study found that CSOs impressively contributed to the government's fight against COVID-19, particularly in view of their roles in creating awareness about the virus and rebutting disinformation regarding the disease, among others. Yet, CSOs encountered some problems while undertaking these roles, prominently the closure of the civic space, noninclusion of CSOs in government's pandemic response architecture, and loss of funding. The study recommends, among other things, that in the case of any future public health emergencies of COVID-19 magnitude, the Nigerian Government should make CSOs an integral part of its response structure, while concluding that the application of these measures would incentivize better contributions from CSOs.