Volume 11, Issue 1

Jeh Johnson has been confirmed as the new Secretary of Homeland Security. All three previous Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretaries have sought to ensure that the disparate set of components, directorates, and offices that compose DHS work together in a unified manner with common goals, attitudes, performance, and culture. However, while progress has been made, this essential but somewhat elusive “One DHS” goal has not yet been reached. The purpose of this article is to investigate the concept of One DHS to see how it might become a renewed rallying cry for making the second decade of this agency’s existence more successful than the first. It parses this goal into 10 dimensions or substantive areas, embellishes each of these topics, and suggests ways for gaining greater unity. Conclusions and recommendations for the new Secretary are offered for attaining and sustaining the One DHS goal going forward.

Emergency Management has learned much from several disciplines (e.g., the physical sciences and sociology) that have been incorporated into the profession. Public Administration is extremely important in Emergency Management, and a concerted effort should be made to incorporate Public Administration theory into the emergency management classroom. If this is accurate, several implications for those who teach emergency management become evident. When management theories and principles are taken into account and incorporated into disaster education, this will change the important emergency management profession for the better.

While terrorism has never been a predictable phenomenon, addressing this problem in a proactive manner is becoming increasingly difficult. It requires that public servants engaged in securing the homeland constantly upgrade their knowledge, skills, and abilities. In this paper, I focus on two areas of administrative competency that need to be developed within our public servants in order for the US to successfully meet this challenge. First, I highlight the need for collaboration across agencies, sectors, and even nations in order to combat terrorism in a way that is both effective and legitimate in the public’s eyes. However, the public context of the terrorism problem requires those acting in the name of national security to ensure that their antiterrorism efforts comply with the requirements and protections of the Constitution. Second, then, I stress the need for those within the public service to have higher levels of constitutional competence so as to address the terrorism threat in a legally sustainable fashion. I conclude with a set of propositions that can help researchers and practitioners develop the broad foundation of knowledge that public administrators need to successfully administer the programs and policies that will help keep America safe.

This article explores the development of emergency management as a specialized profession in institutions of higher education (IHE). The authors perform a meta-analysis of existing literature, research, surveys, and best practices to provide an overview of emergency management in IHE in contrast to municipal and county emergency management organizations. A synopsis of institutional emergency management department demographics, typical responsibilities, and regulatory environment is provided to illustrate the unique challenges facing IHE emergency managers. The article concludes with recommendations for the continued maturation of emergency management as a profession within IHE by defining the emergency manager’s role and responsibilities, establishing best practices, and improving access to the field for women and minorities.

Determining food system criticality is necessary to mitigate risks to the nation’s food supply and prioritize and allocate funding. The Food and Agriculture Sector Criticality Assessment Tool (FASCAT) is a tool used broadly by state governments to determine the criticality of food systems throughout the US State officials (SOs) responsible for food defense (n=32) were surveyed to determine whether FASCAT is of value to food defense and to determine SOs’ security beliefs, values, and practices related to food defense. Results indicated that: (1) SOs believe FASCAT is easier to use than other forms of risk assessment; (2) FASCAT training may have introduced bias into assessment of probability, threat, vulnerability, and consequences; (3) FASCAT is valuable to SOs; (4) SOs do not routinely follow security management best practices; (5) SOs believe that intentional biological threats to the food system are the most probable threats, though without supporting evidence; and (6) SOs believe food defense risk mitigation is not adequately funded by state or federal governments. These findings indicate that even though bias was potentially introduced to FASCAT assessments, SOs believe FASCAT has been useful to them in determining food system criticality. SOs indicate that more funding is needed from state and federal governments to adequately mitigate and manage food defense risks, and that they require more comprehensive training from food defense subject matter experts in threat assessment, risk mitigation, and security management to reduce the possibility of bias from FASCAT training.

Both naturally occurring disease and man-made outbreaks remain serious biological threats. In order to address these threats, the United States has developed a framework of biopreparedness that includes several bioresponse capabilities, one of which is medical countermeasures. No one in the fields of public health or biodefense would be surprised by the fact that the United States is unprepared to respond to a virus for which no medical countermeasures exist. Additionally, bioweapons made resistant to US medical countermeasures would also be catastrophic. This paper describes the biothreats to the United States today, the development of US biopreparedness, the weaknesses of medical countermeasure capabilities, and recommendations on how to improve this area of biopreparedness.

Despite improved data interoperability, common digital architectures, and massive connected digital networks, the same failures of information sharing occur again and again. This paper reviews the information sharing failures that caused or exacerbated major catastrophes – the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina. An analysis of these failures reveals that they fall into only a couple of categories that reflect how organizations partner, communicate, synthesize, or make decisions. The results prompt a redefining of information sharing to capture these broader system notions, furthermore provides a foundation for identifying and explaining historic forms of collaboration that have led to both failures and successes. This paper also reviews the common information sharing safeguards that lead to shared understanding and collaborative outcomes. We map these safeguards against the failures for developing collaboration strategies, and classify them according to six basic systems engineering categories of governance, processes, operations, acceptance, performance measurement, and resource management. Our study of information sharing activities finds that some safeguards like oversight mechanisms or stakeholder management processes are more essential than others. These principles direct evaluation of information sharing activities to prevent these failures in future responses to complex threats.

The US Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) has been holding multiple large hazmat exercises every year for over 20 years. A sample of CSEPP after-action reports were surveyed to extract issues relating to emergency public information. Analysis showed four themes among the identified issues, relating to accuracy of public warnings and news releases; coordination of information among jurisdictions; internal communications; and accuracy/completeness of information provided to individual callers. These issues and the solutions suggested by exercise evaluators are consistent with the current body of knowledge in crisis communications. While these themes emerged from study of particular traditional emergency public information techniques and situations, the lessons they give may be applied to a variety of emergency public information channels including social media.

Resilience and vulnerability of individuals is a common topic in disaster management literature, but business recovery – the ability of businesses to rebound from the shock of a disaster event – is an area that is not well examined. This article considers long-term business recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma in Palm Beach County, Florida, and seeks to discern the role and impact of county government operations on business recovery. This exploratory study shows that the accessibility and availability of contracting opportunities to the local business community in the hurricane’s aftermath, business vulnerability, and individual impacts from the disaster event can all affect business recovery. The results suggest that local governments can proactively respond to the risks posed by natural and other disasters by engaging in efforts to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience in their communities, while enhancing the transparency and accountability of governmental institutions.

The aim of this study is to investigate the level of awareness of personnel and students at Kocaeli University, Umuttepe earthquakes in particular, their impacts, and – Campus, about disasters mitigation measures. The quantitative data collection method was employed and the data was collected by a questionnaire via Internet for 10% of the population of each group. The results of the survey show the influence of education level on awareness level, and the importance of formal education in raising the awareness level of students.