Volume 12, Issue 1

Throughout its history, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been subjected to periods of criticism – notably, its response to Hurricane Katrina – sprinkled with peaks of praise – notably, its handling of Hurricane Sandy. As currently articulated, FEMA’s primary purpose is to better prepare states and local entities to respond to disasters by mitigating the consequences of those disasters and helping to start the recovery process. If first responders cannot adequately handle a situation, then federal operational assistance led by FEMA would come into play. FEMA is now on the proper path toward meeting realistic expectations of its role as the federal agency in charge of leading and coordinating efforts to ensure that the nation is well prepared to cope with natural disasters, accidents, and terrorist attacks. However, political forces have always buffeted FEMA. Within the politically charged atmosphere of the forthcoming presidential election, questions of whether FEMA should once again become independent are emerging, with hints of the more extreme suggestion that the agency be abolished. FEMA’s goal of continuing to effectively meet its disaster relief responsibilities can be reached only if political influences are not allowed to complicate and perhaps even halt its progress.

The powers of our nation’s 50 state governors are enshrined in our Constitution in Article X, wherein those governors may exercise broad authority for their populations, especially in conditions of extreme emergency. However, the full extent of a governor’s emergency powers are not well understood, nor have they been explored in depth to assess the governor’s discretionary authority in a national emergency. Despite the catastrophic events of 9/11 and subsequent 21st century threats, the scope of augmented emergency powers granted to governors remains ambiguous. Specifically, governors lack the robust authority to offer sustained emergency response and recovery operations beyond the normal 72 hours most cities and communities routinely prepare for and expect. However, if Washington, DC, is preoccupied, disabled, or distracted by its own post-attack strategic vulnerability and beset by continuity of operations planning requirements and national security imperatives, the federal government may not be able to set in to provide help after those first 72 hours. Therefore, our governors must plan for sustained operations for an additional 2 weeks after a national catastrophe and equip themselves for that scenario, which puts an enormous strategic burden on them.

The worsening effects of human-caused climate change, as well as issues most American view as “homeland security” (HS) can be seen in the news almost every day. Yet most in the general public and even many in security-related fields do not connect the two arenas, even though climate change, and interrelated resource competition and conflicts that together make up the growing field of environmental security (ES), are increasingly important risk and response variables for homeland security and emergency management. Current climate change effects are already destructive and volatile, but the future projected impacts are likely to be severe and costly to the economic, political, and social health of many nations as well as to a large proportion of the world’s population. The focus of this paper is to describe and connect the evolving concepts of environmental security, homeland security, and national security (NS). Definitions and missions for each concept are discussed, consistent with current, even if contested, practice and theory. Better comparative analysis of these unique but intimately connected realms will help advance the development of more comprehensive and sustainable security policy and strategy.

Homeland Security continues to struggle to define itself as a field of practice and scholarship. The difficulty in defining the field has led to a variety of conflicts over membership, content, and focus. This article reviews some of the prominent debates over the meaning of homeland security as a field of study and practice. It then defines a simple schema for definitions of homeland security inspired by the academic and legislative debates over the issue. A frequency cataloging of definitions from US state agencies illustrates the continued relevance of a “partial membership” approach to defining the field. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the diversity of homeland security definitions for the development of the field.

Objectives: Each of the nuclear power plants in the US is encircled by an Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ). Within each EPZ, government officials, utility professionals, emergency managers, and public health practitioners collectively conduct extensive planning, exercises, and outreach to better protect their communities in the event of a nuclear accident. Our objective was to conduct a cross-sectional study of off-site public health preparedness within EPZs to better understand the dynamics of nuclear preparedness and uncover lessons for all-hazards preparedness. Methods: Using a qualitative, interview-based method, we consulted 120 county emergency managers, state health preparedness officers, state radiation health officials, and industry officials from 17 EPZs in ten different states. Results: Interviewees reflected that EPZ emergency preparedness is generally robust, results from strong public-private partnership between nuclear plants and emergency management agencies, and enhances all-hazard preparedness. However, there exist a few areas which merit further study and improvement. These areas include cross-state coordination, digital public communication, and optimizing the level of public education within EPZs. Conclusions: This first-of-its-kind study provides a cross-sectional snapshot of emergency preparedness in the 10-mile EPZ surrounding nuclear power plants.

This paper discusses incident management strategies widely used above the incident management team (IMT) level in the four Australian States namely, Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland. It begins with an overview of how incident management approaches above the IMT might differ from the local IMT level. By exploring this difference, this paper provides an insight into how emergency management personnel working above or beyond the local IMT level often deal with large scale multiple emergency events and require an understanding of broader problems that they might confront in the future. Then, it provides an outline of how strategic emergency management objectives are addressed in the state level arrangements in aforementioned jurisdictions. Specifically, this includes response orientations, state level emergency management facilities, long term thinking, the management of stakeholder relationships, leadership, and organisational adaptation and capacity building. Later, some of the challenges associated with incident management above the IMT level are discussed. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing the implications of this study to the emergency management sector.

Urgent response is vitally important after unpredictable disasters and it is highly dependent to the location of the emergency centers. Considering this importance degree, in this study, a location selection methodology for emergency logistics centers (ELCs) is proposed. There are various influencing factors or criteria to choose the most convenient locations for ELCs. However, we focused on some of the most important and prior criteria to obtain a more feasible approach and less calculation intensity. The main point is ranking and weighting the convenient locations or cities for constructing an ELC in a region or country. The alternative locations are chosen through the mostly natural disaster-prone cities. Decision criteria are determined according to the expert opinions. Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) methods are integrated to determine the convenient locations considering the relations between criteria and alternative locations. Afterwards, a real life application of the proposed methodology is realized for the Turkey case. Finally, results are examined and analyzed in terms of their sensitivity on the criteria weight changes.

Across the US, coastal cities are threatened by many different man-made and natural hazards. From oil spill to hurricanes, tsunamis or coastal flooding, these cities should be prepared for emergency situations and should have well-organized emergency plans for their citizens. As a department that has contact with local government employees, human resource (HR) professionals understand the concepts that are important in times of crisis, including benefits management, training and development, and compensation. From mitigation to recovery, employees are vital to planning and responding to an emergency, and in a time when local government is focused on serving its citizens, local government human resource professionals serve those protecting those citizens – local government employees. The objective of this paper is to assess the roles and involvement of local government human resource professionals in emergency planning in coastal cities nationwide. Using responses collected from HR professionals in coastal cities with populations of 50,000 – 249,999, this paper investigates common HR issues included in emergency plans. Based on the analysis of their responses, gaps are identified and recommendations are made of ways in which human resources can contribute more effectively towards emergency planning for coastal cities.

Preparation for a disaster is not something that can be done by a single organization thus there is a need for coordination between them. Meetings and joint exercises are one means of coordination used by the emergency management community. Meetings and exercises take time, including transportation of personnel and arrangements, and time is money. With limited budgets, emergency managers need to make hard decisions about how their time is allocated. This paper describes a cost model for meeting analysis and discusses a case study that looks at the holistic time spent on meetings and exercises, by personnel, for the Hampton Roads Region of Virginia. A novel way is used to display this expenditure, e.g., it is shown in terms of monetary cost instead of temporal cost. This analysis highlighted some unexpected results, i.e., the small number of personnel involved in multiple working group meetings and high level of travel costs between the HR and the state capital, Richmond. This cost model approach may provide emergency managers with better mechanisms to show their meetings costs to senior leadership.

The South African disaster management legislation advocates the importance of implementing pro-active disaster risk reduction strategies that will ensure a safe and sustainable society. One key strategic activity identified is the use of simulation exercises to improve overall societal readiness and inter-agency coordination in case of major incidents or disasters. However, very little is currently understood or planned especially at South African local government level, on what simulation exercises entail and the methodology behind their implementation. This paper aims at conveying some crucial methodological inputs that disaster risk managers or emergency response agencies should consider when planning, designing and implementing simulation exercises by analysing a hazardous chemical spillage simulation in the Tlokwe Local Municipality, North-West Province, South Africa. The research found that in the South African context attention needs to be paid to methodological issues such as scenario development, role-player selection, fidelity during simulation delivery, data collection and participant (de)briefing.