Journal of business continuity & emergency planning最新文献

The COVID-19 public health emergency severely limited the ability of emergency managers to conduct emergency exercises, particularly at the functional or full-scale level. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic response, other emergencies continued, and local emergency management was called to respond, ensuring that local guidelines and COVID-19 restrictions were observed. This paper describes how the pandemic impacted on the City of Puyallup's emergency management training and exercise programme and how the City adapted to conduct a full-scale exercise in the autumn of 2021. Multiple delays, planning partners overwhelmed by COVID-19, and emergencies that occurred prior to the exercise were all addressed and included in the exercise scenario. The City of Puyallup and its planning partners built in contingencies in the run-up to the exercise, all the way through to the day of exercise play. Providing a safe, realistic and timely opportunity for the City of Puyallup and partners to conduct the exercise has resulted in a far-reaching after-action report and improvement plan to guide the preparedness and planning efforts of the City and its partners.

This paper discusses how the experience and skill set developed within the field of business continuity management (BCM) provide a strong base from which organisations can leverage value in areas not traditionally considered within the remit of BCM. In particular, the paper examines the topic of climate-related financial disclosure, an important area that is gaining traction with investors and therefore senior executives too. Although, in itself, it is not an incident or event, this new area of focus has the potential to impact a company's ability to thrive and prosper. This paper will discuss how the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure strengthen an organisation's business continuity programme strategy, as well as sustainability objectives, by enabling executive-level conversations about the organisation's operational and financial resilience, as well as actions with a positive outcome for the environment that will lead to competitive advantage. This paper argues that by facilitating these discussions, BCM helps to establish organisational priorities and develop specific action plans that can be validated through exercising.

This paper discusses ResilienceDirect - the UK's strategic resilience platform for response and information sharing, designed to support the multi-agency aspects of emergency response. The paper will focus on the functionality of the system as well as the related challenges. The paper identifies a set of recommendations for addressing the challenges to improve usability and uptake. The recommendations will consider best practices from other multi-agency response platforms and feedback from ResilienceDirect users.

This paper explores how advances in technology, widely expanded consumer communications capabilities and the lessons learned from response and recovery efforts to address large and/or complex incidents and events have all contributed to changes in how the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and incident command system have been used since their introduction in 2007. NIMS underscores the importance of providing incident response and recovery personnel, along with other key personnel, with access to the tools and information they need to make and communicate decisions. As this paper discusses, however, the command structure was not designed with today's technology in mind. This paper reviews the history and organisation of supporting voice, data and video capabilities for effective incident management, and where the approach to addressing these - and other - emerging needs is heading.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Exercise Division (NED) leads the nation in validating the capabilities of the whole community in support of the National Preparedness System. In response to the increased threat of climate change, the NED has developed new resources to help communities increase preparedness for severe weather and natural disasters in the long term. This paper provides an overview of two such resources to help communities identify and prepare for climate-related events: the Long-Term Community Resilience Exercise Resource Guide (ERG) and the Climate Adaptation Exercise Series (CAES). These resources help communities develop and conduct exercises to increase their climate literacy, develop climate adaptation and mitigation plans, and leverage data on future climate conditions to inform decision-making. Exercises provide an opportunity for communities to build resilience by discussing and better understanding climate change and to plan for, adapt to, and mitigate the associated risks and hazards. The ERG provides guidance, tools and resources, and the CAES provides a consistent framework that FEMA regions can tailor to address unique, region-specific climate concerns. The results collected from these exercises, in turn, identify strengths to leverage and areas to improve, informing plans of action for a path forward for the next 20, 30 and 50 years.

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management was established in October 2021 after decades of reorganisation and relocation within state government. The elevation of the agency from under the Maryland Military Department to a cabinet-level department was a result of years of partnership building with stakeholders as well as two significant external pressures: the COVID-19 response and the interest in improving 911 delivery through the implementation of next-generation 911 technology. This case study examines the history of emergency management organisation in Maryland and highlights lessons learned and best practices for emergency managers seeking to elevate emergency management from a subagency level to a cabinet level or direct report to the highest elected official.

This paper describes how Hurricane Ida exposed gaps in emergency preparedness planning and coordination in New Orleans, particularly related to the health and safety of the residents of multi-storey independent living facilities designated for seniors and persons with disabilities, where at least ten lives were lost due to the power outages and extreme heat that occurred following the storm. As this paper discusses, New Orleans Health Department leaders responded by taking swift policy action, working with the mayor, city council and community stakeholders to ensure better coordination, preparation and accountability for owners and operators of certain independent living facilities. The article recommends that states and localities with individuals living in independent living facilities should consider similar policy interventions as part of their disaster cycle planning activities.

Certain social psychological variables can result in delays to essential steps in IT data centre disaster recovery response, including the formal declaration of disaster. These delays can result in failure to meet recovery time objectives, additional financial losses, regulatory issues and a significant loss of customer goodwill, all beyond what would have been incurred in the absence of delays. This paper describes a failsafe model to counter these variables. The model will help ensure that any disaster recovery response step earmarked as a failsafe point is completed in a timely manner, from the moment of disaster to the resumption of business.

This paper outlines the context of emergency management in Canada and identifies some of the key factors that have contributed to public emergency preparedness initiatives reaching a saturation point. Readers will gain insight and actionable suggestions from the proposed Community Resiliency Framework. Readers will learn how emergency management agencies can engage and collaborate authentically with communities and leverage existing preparedness initiatives with new methodologies to increase community resiliency.

As rapid inflation, continuing supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine impact petroleum prices worldwide, fuel supply disruptions have become an increasing concern. This paper describes Washington State's geographical, political and organisational context as it influences fuel disruption planning, as well as the history and philosophy of Washington's fuel-planning programme. Finally, the paper discusses planning best practices and gives some examples of their real-world use.