Journal of business continuity & emergency planning最新文献

Disasters and catastrophes are increasing in frequency, severity and complexity, meaning that effective multi-organisational response has never been more pertinent. The United States' National Incident Management System (NIMS), which includes the on-scene Incident Command System (ICS) component, is mandated for use at all levels of government and is often framed, somewhat narrowly, as a mechanistic hierarchy or an organic network. The related literature is divergent: academic critiques are lamented for lacking real-world insights whereas practitioner accounts are, unfairly, dismissed as anecdotal, meaning that novel insights that inform future preparedness are needed. Accordingly, this conceptual study reimagines NIMS/ICS using pragmatism, metaphorical analysis - informed by Morgan's seminal organisational metaphors, Pinto's 'Icehotel', and McCabe's 'Wonderland' metaphors - and symbolic logic. This paper demonstrates that NIMS/ICS is both mechanistic and organic, and much more at the same time. They engender much-needed novel and innovative perspectives which can be embedded within training and education activities to address the increasingly complex nature of disasters and catastrophes.

This paper discusses the importance of exercising private sector crisis management plans and teams. It identifies common roadblocks that prevent corporate emergency managers from creating and executing meaningful exercises and suggests how to address those challenges. It describes a step-by-step process to devise comprehensive exercises, including how to create buy-in from senior leaders and other stakeholders, selection of crisis team members, creative ways to engage teams and exercise plans, and the importance of after-action reports (AAR) and improvement plans. The benefits of creating and administering successful goal-oriented exercises are outlined and supported through real-life experience and examples. The paper provides insight into how to achieve cohesive and response-ready crisis management teams through designing and leading creative and goal-oriented crisis management exercises. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

The disciplines of crisis management, emergency management, business continuity and resilience are at an inflection point. Is the work of professionals in these fields subject to what some have called at recent industry conferences a failure of imagination? Are the tried-and-true methods and activities serving practitioners as well as they always have, or does today's world demand something different? The more important question is: In these conditions, how can crisis leaders do the most good? To answer that question, crisis management professionals may consider shifting their emphasis from planning, training and exercising alone and introducing more explicit focus on the delivery of good decision making - in other words, a transition of emphasis from response planning to more strategic programme management. All crises - whether fast burning, slow burning or creeping - require decision making. Ultimately in the aftermath, organisations and their leaders are judged not only on the outcomes of a crisis response, but on the decisions they made. Furthermore, this judgment is made not only on whether the decisions were right or wrong alone, but also whether they were defensible based on the best available information at the time. In confrontation with these realities, there is a unique role for enterprise crisis teams to define a value proposition along a set of guiding principles. From there, operational execution may be bridged through an integrated crisis management framework. This paper proposes a way forward along these lines. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

This paper examines trends in the employment of emergency planning officers (EPOs) within London's local governments over 18 years. The main aim is to assess how workforce levels in local authority resilience and civil protection roles have been influenced by policy and significant regional, national and international incidents and events. The paper analyses employment data, correlating EPO numbers with major legislative, economic and societal events to investigate perceived and actual workforce trends. Key findings reveal fluctuations in EPO employment, including a significant decline from 2009 to 2017 due to austerity, which was later offset by sharp increases following regional emergencies and new resilience policies. The 2023-24 period saw the highest EPO employment in London for the research period, although disparities in staffing levels between boroughs persist, potentially affecting regional resilience capabilities. Conclusions emphasise the critical yet reactionary nature of resilience staffing, with increases often prompted by recent crises rather than proactive planning. This pattern underscores vulnerabilities in organisational learning and continuity in civil protection functions. The study highlights the need for consistent investment in resilience personnel to address an increasingly complex risk environment. Further implications suggest that local resilience planning could benefit from standardised strategies and continued evaluation of EPO capacity to better support London's ability to respond to future emergencies. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

The summer of 2023 was Canada's most destructive wildfire season in recorded history. The southern region of the province of British Columbia (BC) is prone to wildfires and flooding, placing infrastructure, communities and human lives at risk. Residents of long-term care (LTC) facilities are especially vulnerable to these events. Healthcare leaders face the challenge of deciding when and under what circumstances to evacuate an LTC facility. This requires careful evaluation of the dangers posed by the event and the risks associated with the sudden displacement of frail residents. This risk assessment leads to two decision points: is it safer for residents to shelter-in-place or to evacuate to an alternative care facility? Given the increasing frequency and severity of climate-related disasters and their impact on the health and well-being of LTC residents, health emergency incident managers identified the need to develop a standardised approach for evacuation decision making. This paper analyses how the Interior Health (IH) Authority collaborated with Health Emergency Management BC (HEMBC) to develop an Evacuation Risk Decision-Support Tool. This tool informed LTC facility evacuations during the 2023 McDougall Creek wildfire in West Kelowna, BC.

The electric grid is increasingly a major component in the impact of and recovery from disasters. Ultimately, investments in grid resilience help to sustain the ability of a community to withstand and recover after a disaster by mitigating the effects of widespread power outages and hardening critical infrastructure to better withstand and recover from disasters. This notion of 'resilience', however, has generally been more theoretical and aspirational rather than something that can be quantified and ultimately integrated into systems evaluation and decision-making paradigms. This paper describes how on resilience profile and balanced scorecard approaches, an evidence-informed approach towards quantifying resilience across various domains utilising a modified balanced scorecard methodology is presented.

This paper describes an initiative launched by the Los Angeles County (LAC) Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Agency to bolster emergency power resilience for hospitals operating in LAC. The multiyear initiative, launched in 2019 and concluded in October 2023, culminated in the publication of the 'Healthcare Facility Emergency Power Resilience Playbook',1 a heralded resource that introduces innovative protocols to address significant vulnerabilities uncovered during the initiative. These vulnerabilities included seriously outdated generators, facilities with no redundant emergency power and facilities with limited onsite generator fuel storage capacity. New protocols developed to address these gaps include accelerated emergency power threat reporting by hospitals and a first-ever, confidential risk rating of hospital emergency power systems by a government agency. This move is intended to help the LAC EMS Agency maintain closer vigilance of higher-risk facilities during an outage. The new protocols far exceed the federal government's emergency power requirements for hospitals. This paper also outlines the additional steps jurisdictions could consider to build on the LAC EMS Agency's groundbreaking work to achieve even higher levels of emergency power resilience. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

This paper advocates for the integration of threat exposure monitoring (TEM) as a critical tool in cyber security resilience frameworks. As organisations face increasing cyber threats, TEM provides an essential, proactive approach to identifying potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. By monitoring various online environments, including the dark web, hacker forums and misconfigured cloud storage, TEM can uncover compromised credentials, exposed data and other risk factors that could lead to operational disruptions. This proactive monitoring strategy enhances an organisation's preparedness, helping to prevent costly incidents and mitigate risks before they escalate. Using notable case studies, such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident and the Orange Spain outage, the paper illustrates the devastating impact of cyber breaches and underscores how TEM could help avoid similar disruptions. Readers will gain an understanding of how to implement a TEM programme, identify critical digital assets for monitoring and integrate TEM within broader threat intelligence practices. Ultimately, this paper provides resilience professionals with a structured approach to leveraging TEM for robust cyber defence, offering practical insights on reducing exposure risks and strengthening overall business resiliency. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.