Journal of business continuity & emergency planning最新文献

There have been a large number of masscasualty incidents in recent years, including climate change-related disasters, mass shootings, terrorist attacks, transportation accidents and a global pandemic. Communities, families and friends have suffered grief and loss, while nations continue to bear the scars of trauma. Disasters caused by acts with criminality, although necessarily managed by the police for the investigative aspect, must be planned for, and responded to with victim-centred practices by the police, local government and other relevant community stakeholders for the duration of the response and recovery. Inconsistency and confusion over terminology and language in emergency management can lead to a lack of understanding about which stakeholders or agencies should be engaged in, and responsible for different aspects of the planning, preparedness, mitigation and response to a community disaster - regardless of what type of disaster it is, and irrespective of the disaster being caused by a person or persons with ill-intent. This paper discusses how a wholeof- community and victim-centred approach to criminal act disaster response should be applied to support those persons most adversely affected by the incident. It also promotes the application of victim-centred practices to ensure that the needs of victims are regarded ethically, and with compassion following any disaster caused by an act of criminality. The term 'mass victimisation incident' will be introduced and applied through a case study.

Cyber attacks have a significant business impact, with the potential to escalate into crises if poorly managed. A recurring pattern is strategic dilemmas that cannot be resolved satisfactorily. Some dilemmas are more pronounced, others less so, and therefore often catch decision-makers unprepared, leaving only bad options for decision-making. Something that all dilemmas have in common is that the associated decisions can have a lasting impact on relationships with stakeholders. This paper introduces four recurring dilemmas; shows the typical considerations; lists options for mitigating these dilemmas; and describes the basic requirements for implementing mitigations. The dilemmas and options, in turn, are rooted in the organisation-specific design of: cyber security incident management and response; IT service continuity and disaster recovery management; business continuity management; and crisis management and communication.

This paper draws on the literature of nanomanagement and organisational resilience to explore the reality of surge capacity in the context of the Egyptian government's effort to contain the recent COVID-19 pandemic. It utilises nanomanagement networking to explain the significant models of decision making, communication and sense making, taking into account the resilient interconnections and interdependence among organisations, to understand how these impact on the resilience of crisis management surge capacity. With a focus on COVID-19 crisis management in Egypt, the study analyses empirical data collected from interviews with actors from different governmental organisations. Following this, the paper focuses on the role of nanomanagement in realising the resilience of interorganisational network capacity to obtain accurate and up-to-date information in order to develop the system strategies and responses necessary to enable convenient surge capacity for COVID-19 crisis management.

Over the last two years, agencies have experimented with new systems and tactics to reach as many people as possible with critical preparedness information. This paper describes how COVID-19 forced FEMA Region 10 to adapt its public education and outreach strategy to a fully online space in order to keep the public informed about potential disasters. The paper discusses how the Individual and Community Preparedness team at FEMA Region 10 reaches thousands of people around the world by hosting regular webinars, live events, workshops and training sessions, and publishing a monthly newsletter. The paper also argues that if preparedness and response organisations are to evolve their outreach strategies and messaging plans and extend the reach of their messages, they must continue to adapt and to meet their target audience where they are.

While it may be more common to think of a disaster volunteer as someone from outside the community who comes to assist during times of need, it is important not to forget those members of the community who are well poised to build grassroots resilience when provided with the necessary training and tools. This paper examines the state of disaster volunteerism in Latin America and Spanish-speaking communities in the USA who have been exposed to the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programme, with an emphasis on the perceptions of and motivations for grassroots volunteerism from the perspective of both local emergency managers and CERT volunteers. The research team developed an online survey and shared it with active Spanish-speaking emergency management groups throughout the USA, Mexico, Central and South America. Conducted over nine days in October 2022, the survey collected 40 responses from the target demographic. The results show that enthusiasm for disaster volunteerism is high throughout the communities surveyed. Established disaster volunteer training programmes like CERT and LISTOS have already been successfully exported from the USA to Chile, Honduras and Mexico. An international community of emergency managers should consider how else to support grassroots preparedness activities in Latin America to ensure that local communities are empowered to direct their own resilience-building initiatives.

The business impact analysis (BIA) is a major component of risk management and business continuity planning. It is the process of assessing the impact over time of a disruption on the organisation's people, products, services, and to its customers. This paper offers guidance on establishing and completing a comprehensive BIA that represents the organisation, department or process to achieve compliance and, ultimately, resilience. To remain competitive, organisations must examine and adapt their BIAs when circumstances change, whether internally or externally. This paper provides a formula to ensure the BIA is developed methodically. By considering organisational culture and standards, internal and external assessment requirements, and standardised analysis calculations, the organisation will create a BIA that closely reflects its environment and yet still provides scope for improvement. The paper also considers metrics and planning activities to support BIA design. By following this guidance in this paper, organisations will be better able to crack the BIA code and take a value-added approach to business continuity planning.

Effective communication with internal and external stakeholders is an indispensable component of a successful response to crises both brief and long-lasting. Employee communication must increase in volume and frequency, and effectively inform, educate and empower employees. The development, testing and delivery of clear and easy-to-understand messages must be prioritised along with the enablement of continuous employee feedback. Drawing on industry best practice, personal experience and an extensive review of the literature, this paper concludes that the systematic planning, implementation and evaluation of a company's employee communication must be conducted on an ongoing, company-wide basis so that management can rely on it to minimise crisis-related damage, seize the opportunities a crisis may present, and convert the resulting organisational change into competitive advantages.

This paper describes how the Government of Manitoba employed the incident command system (ICS) to support its COVID-19 response from March 2020 to March 2022. The paper describes how the system evolved during this period to optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency response and recovery efforts. The paper supports a more comprehensive implementation of the ICS to manage emergency and recovery effectively, with specific reference to the Omicron wave of the pandemic.