Volume 4, Issue 3

This is a listing of research products and other sources of information that are published elsewhere.

A review of The Storm by Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan. New York, Viking, 2006. 308 pp., index. 23 illustrations.

Review of System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics (2nd ed.) by Dr. Donald F. Kettl: CQ Press, 2007.

Review of Technology in Emergency Management by John C. Pine: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.

A review of Disaster Response and Homeland Security: What Works, What Doesn't by James F. Miskel, 162 pp. 2006 Prager Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881.

A review of Introduction to International Disaster Management, by Damon Coppola. The reviewer is Alan Kirschenbaum, of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

This paper describes the previous attempts at improving the competency levels of first responders, problems with these approaches, and a suggested new approach that focuses on establishing a national emergency response competency system. The analysis focuses on how to derive an improved set of competencies that meet the needs of all stakeholders. It discusses the issue of how to create taxonomies for competencies and their aggregation into clusters, tasks, and roles. It explores the vital linkages between position classification, learning, and performance evaluation. It recommends an approach to performance indexing or scorecarding for ongoing management.

The emergency management field has long been split by an apparent "gap" between academics and practitioners, in spite of efforts over many years to bring these two occupational domains closer together. This paper argues that, while there are differences in the way work is done in these domains, they can actually be seen as part of the same overall profession because they are concerned with the production and application of the same knowledge for the same purpose. The paper bases its argument on the activities considered to be part of Comprehensive Emergency Management, and draws additional support from the relationship between research and practice in other professions. The paper concludes by arguing that the emergency management profession would be strengthened by declaratively closing the gap.

The Department of Homeland Security uses a particular kind of vulnerability approach to allocate many of its disaster preparedness resources but it should allocate a greater number of resources using a risk-based approach in order to reduce future disaster losses. A true risk-based strategy of resource allocation demands the development of a national risk assessment that is too expensive, wide-ranging, and technically complex for states and localities to develop on their own. A risk-based approach would allocate more money toward more frequent but less catastrophic or visible disasters that, over time, may cost more than low probability, high consequence disasters. This paper explores the virtues and vices of both vulnerability and risk-based planning approaches, examines recent efforts in the DHS to plan for catastrophes, and analyzes the challenges in developing a national risk assessment.

All-hazard partnerships have the potential to expand the capacity of a community's ability to be ready, set and able to go in disasters. The Citizen Corps Council is an example of an all-hazards organization, which exists across the United States. Although the membership of each organization might change slightly, an essential similarity remains the partnership of trained volunteers working alongside first responders. One approach to gain insight into the organizational dynamics of the partnership is to identify shared core values. Members validate values through an Appreciative Inquiry process, which encourages story telling about the organization. This essay documents values associated with recruitment, training, coordination and retention elements of an all-hazards team. Recommendations for incorporation of identified value statements into all-hazard organizational campaigns for example, will likely resonate with prospective members.

In addition to causing death, injury, and destruction on a massive scale, Hurricane Katrina also revealed critical flaws in the entire U. S. emergency management system. Some of those deficiencies were of long standing, while others were the result of poor policy and decision making following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.In the aftermath of Katrina, many critical reports were issued, and the executive and legislative branches of the U. S. government took steps to address some Katrina-related problems. Such efforts include the passage of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act and the revision of the National Response Plan.It is too soon to tell whether new initiatives will actually improve the ability of the U.S. to respond to extreme and catastrophic events. It may be that measures undertaken following Katrina will make little difference in the long run. To effectively reduce disaster losses, significant advances must be made in several areas, including: the development of a fully-functional and integrated emergency management system; a return to an all-hazards and comprehensive emergency management philosophy; the de-politicization of top emergency management positions; reforms aimed at increasing the resilience of civil society institutions in the face of disasters; strategies to address existing and future deficiencies in the emergency management work force; and initiatives aimed at strengthening emergency management oversight, accountability, and program evaluation. These broad lessons are applicable both to the U.S. context and to other nations.

Despite the growing popularity of Geographic Information System (GIS) information maps as a public health tool, there are no published studies of low-average and low literacy adults' abilities to read and use GIS information presenting emergency preparedness information. We hypothesized that GIS maps are hard to read for at least the 50% of adults in the US reading at 8th grade level or lower (Kirsch et al., 1993). Using a current GIS map used in New York City's Office of Emergency Management Storm Surge Report researchers conducted interviews with 178 English and Spanish speaking residents of East and Central Harlem. Findings reveal that a majority of adults who have not completed high school could not read and use the maps for basic and vital information, including identifying if they lived in a hurricane evacuation zone, and locating where the nearest evacuation center to their home was. This study concludes there is a real and dangerous gap between the language and design of GIS and the abilities of millions of adults to interpret and use this information as currently presented.

Preparedness training for terrorist attacks typically focuses on traditional first responders. Properly trained community residents should be capable of providing life saving assistance in the event that traditional first responders and the public health infrastructure are seriously constrained following a bioterror event. Findings from "Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism 2006," suggest that while the U.S. has made progress, it is still not adequately prepared to respond to the full range of serious threats. Review of the bioterrorism emergency preparedness literature indicates that individual and community training can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of the overall response. This study reveals that the residents of the National Capital Region (NCR) are generally unprepared to respond to such emergencies. This research identifies potential obstacles to citizen involvement in bioterror response and explores plausible courses of action for training communities to actively participate in response activities. Major impediments include lack of planning or training opportunities, poor health literacy, and insufficient sustainable resources.

The devastating aftermath from Hurricane Katrina accentuates the need for localized disaster planning that considers those without access to automobiles—including the poor, elderly, and disabled. Planning for evacuation during extreme events should consider the "carless" by paying special attention to the movement of people to safety using a combination of methods—by foot, public transit, coaches, and vans. Many Upstate New York places are ill prepared for the large-scale evacuation of the carless that may result from an extreme event. The share of households without vehicles in several Upstate cities—Albany (28 percent), Buffalo (31 percent), and Syracuse (27 percent)—surprisingly meets or exceeds the share in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. This study identifies strengths and weaknesses within upstate written disaster plans in regards to multi-modal evacuation. Findings suggest that many upstate places—except for those near nuclear power plants—have inadequate written plans for mass evacuation, especially when considering the carless population. We recommend future research directions to include wide samples, best practices for carless evacuations, and development of multi-modal evacuation models.

Effective methods of communication are vital to preparing the public for emergency events. Hurricane Katrina was an unfortunate example of the devastating consequences that can occur from inadequate communication prior to and during emergency events. The presence of health disparities exacerbates these consequences for vulnerable populations such as low-income minorities. To address the need for more research within this realm of public health, the Morgan State University School of Public Health and Policy implemented the Special Populations Bioterrorism Initiative to assess the experiences and needs of low income minorities affected by natural disasters in Maryland.As an extension of this initiative, a content analysis of web-based emergency preparedness risk communication materials collected from the 26 county and municipal emergency management offices in Maryland was conducted to determine their appropriateness in reaching low income African Americans and Latinos. The results illustrated a significant disparity in the amount of culturally tailored information available for these populations, as well as the need for improvement in developing and disseminating culturally appropriate emergency risk communication designed to reach low income minorities.

Since the late 1980's, al-Qa'ida expanded from a small group of mujahadeen freedom fighters combating the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to a highly sophisticated, distributed terrorist network able to conduct large-scale, international acts of terrorism. The terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 brought to the fore a group of people who had a competing, devastatingly lethal philosophy to modern societies around the world. A systems dynamics model was created in order to better understand how this group attained its current status and what possible strategies the United States could take to counter al-Qa'ida's efforts.The model consists of six sub-models: one to replicate the actions taken by the United States and five to describe how al-Qa'ida recruits new members, trains these recruits, sustains their capabilities, and then executes terrorist attacks. The model was first validated by establishing that its output data closely resembled the behavior of al-Qa'ida and the United States over the period 1990-2002. Two different United States strategies are being tested against two different al-Qa'ida strategies for the period 2002-2010 to determine possible outcomes the United States may face.Results from the model indicate that despite potential successes in capturing 9,000-13,000 members of al-Qa'ida and preventing most of their attacks, the United States could still potentially suffer at least 3 additional terrorist attacks before 2010 resulting in the loss of a minimum of 2,000 lives. Even though these results are not predictive, they do pose additional questions that the United States should be asking and answering; questions such as: Will the American people "accept" 2,000 additional deaths as a cost of the global war on terrorism? and what else could and should the United States federal government be doing to ensure the security of the American people?