Volume 16, Issue 2

The complexity of large-scale disasters requires governance structures that can integrate numerous responders quickly under often chaotic conditions. Complex disasters – by definition – span multiple jurisdictions and activate numerous response functions carried out by numerous legally autonomous public, nonprofit, and private actors. The command operating structure of the Incident Command System (ICS) is a hierarchical structure used to manage complex incidents. Increasingly, complex disasters are seen as networks of multiple actors. Improving our capacity to respond to large-scale, complex disasters requires moving beyond the “hierarchy versus networks” debate to understand the conditions under which governance structures can best serve disaster response goals. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of the governance structures embedded in our national policy tools and frameworks can enhance our ability to govern effectively in networked contexts. In this article, we suggest the need to shift focus to build greater capacity for hybrid and network governance approaches, including a more sophisticated understanding of the conditions under which these governance forms are most effective.

Despite Federal directives calling for an integrated approach to strengthening the resilience of critical infrastructure systems, little is known about the relationship between human behavior and infrastructure resilience. While it is well recognized that human response can either amplify or mitigate catastrophe, the role of human or psychological resilience when infrastructure systems are confronted with surprise remains an oversight in policy documents and resilience research. Existing research treats human resilience and technological resilience as separate capacities that may create stress conditions that act upon one another. There remains a knowledge gap regarding study of those attributes in each that build infrastructure resilience as an integrated system of humans and technologies. This work draws on concepts found in the resilience engineering and psychology literature to examine the dynamic relationships between human resilience and the resilience of complex, socio-technical critical infrastructure systems. We identify and organize 18 system capacities and 23 human capacities that influence infrastructure resilience. We then correlate individual human and system resilience capacities to determine how each influences four socio-technical processes for resilience: sensing, anticipating, adapting, and learning. Our analysis shows that the human and technical resilience capacities reviewed are interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent. Further, we find current literature is focused more on cognitive and behavioral dimensions of human resilience and we offer ways to better incorporate affective capacities. Together, we present a simple way to link the resilience of technological systems to the cognitive, behavioral, and affective dimensions of humans responsible for the system design, operation, and management.

Training or Educating Emergency Management practitioners and academics are crucial to disaster risk reduction. However, not much is known about higher education program development, specifically, degree program development in Emergency Management. This paper seeks to find factors that help and or hinder Emergency Management higher education program development. An interpretive constructionist perspective method was used to analyze data collected through purposive and snowball sampling. Nineteen emergency management scholars and practitioners who have been involved with Ghana’s efforts, and additional six faculty members who have been involved with developing other new degree programs in four Ghanaian universities were also selected through snowball sampling for the purposes of comparison. Data was collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews. The results suggest six main factors explain why Ghana has not yet established an Emergency Management degree program. The factors include institutional support, partnership, advocacy, funding, program marketing, and cultural factors. In addition to laying theoretical foundation for studies in this area, the relative novelty of Disaster/Emergency Management degree programs, make findings of this study, a checklist for institutions looking into establishing Disaster or Emergency Management degree programs in future.