Volume 9, Issue 2

Cybersecurity is a serious and complex problem that is escalating at all levels, yet little research has examined the issue at the local government level. This probative study, based on an extensive e-survey of Florida county officials, focuses on: (1) the incidence of cyber attacks – type, source (internal vs. external), and severity (major, minor); (2) perceived threats to agency operations – internally and externally from utility and telecommunications companies, financial institutions, hospitals, and schools; (3) the current status of cybersecurity planning; (4) the urgency of unmet preparedness-related needs; and (5) the degree to which financial, personnel, and organizational roadblocks have deterred the development of comprehensive cybersecurity plans. Controls are made for agency size and type of position held. The study finds that the knowledge or awareness gap between IT professionals and generalist and specialist public administrators is even wider at the local than at the federal (or state) levels. Preparedness lags because of this knowledge gap. There is little sense of urgency, partially because many non-IT officials have little understanding of newer, more dangerous cyber threats and cyber crime.

The transportation of hazardous materials is vital to the U.S. economy and inherently dangerous. In the decade since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, policymakers have struggled to confront the distinct safety and security challenges associated with hazardous materials transportation. Reducing the risks of “toxic inhalation hazards,” a dangerous subset of hazardous materials, from both accidents and intentional disruptions is an ongoing source of controversy. In this paper, we examine proposed risk mitigation measures and outline a policy program designed to reduce the risks associated with hazardous materials transportation. The analysis highlights the limitations and counterproductive nature of narrowly-targeted strategies exclusively designed to confront either safety or security, and emphasizes the importance of comprehensive risk-mitigation strategies.

Effective port emergency evacuation could reduce the potential damages and losses caused by a predictive natural disaster. Thus, most U.S. ports have evacuation plans or guidelines established for predictive natural disasters, especially hurricanes. However, hurricane Katrina still revealed that these existing emergency evacuation plans may not be as effective as originally expected. The objective of this study is to provide a quantitative approach to evaluating the effectiveness of port emergency evacuation plans for hurricanes. A discrete-event simulation model is developed in this study to capture the dynamic evacuation process in a complex port environment when a hurricane approaches a port. Using this simulation model, an experimental study is conducted to compare the effectiveness of 80 port hurricane evacuation plans in the two public container terminals within the Port of Houston (POH). These 80 plans include the current POH hurricane evacuation plan and 79 variants of this plan. The simulation results indicate that an effective port hurricane evacuation plan should require prohibiting inbound and outbound traffic when the hurricane is forecast to be 12 hours away from landfall, and consistently securing port facilities, equipment and containers during the entire evacuation process.

Recent research in three Southern states supplied data describing the role community structure and culture played in shaping public response to tornado risks. The following study identifies and describes how residents received, made sense of, and ultimately used information to make decisions about responding to warnings. In addition to a range of theoretical concerns, research was also intended to develop a set of safety policies derived from what the data reveals about the social psychology of risk perception, economic constraints to shelter, and the cultural aspects of response. Data analysis reveals a diverse set of social factors governing community response to tornado warnings, including social networks, language, issues in comprehension, siren ambiguities, false alarms, tornado tracking, local business behaviors, warning specificity, and cultural myths.

Our main concern in this article is whether nation-wide information technology (IT) infrastructures or systems in emergency response and disaster management are the solution to the communication problems the safety sector suffers from. It has been argued that implementing nation-wide IT systems will help to create shared cognition and situational awareness among relief workers. We put this claim to the test by presenting a case study on the introduction of ‘netcentric work’, an IT system-based platform aiming at the creation of situational awareness for professionals in the safety sector in the Netherlands. The outcome of our research is that the negotiation with relevant stakeholders by the Dutch government has lead to the emergence of several fragmented IT systems. It becomes clear that a top-down implementation strategy for a single nation-wide information system will fail because of the fragmentation of the Dutch safety sector it is supposed to be a solution to. As the US safety sector is at least as fragmented as its Dutch counterpart, this may serve as a caveat for the introduction of similar IT systems in the US.

Background: On 11/3/2004, ten explosive devices detonated on board four different commuter trains in Madrid. Over 2000 casualties and 191 deaths were recorded. This study examines the adaptability of Israeli EMS protocols for Mass-Casualty-Incidents to the event.Methods: Detailed conduct of Madrid EMS during the terror attack was mapped based on interviews and published data. Three topics, in which shortfalls were described in the literature, were examined: Emergency preparedness, Leadership and Management, and Organization.Results: An event manager was not predefined, resulting in too many or no leaders on-site. Lack of familiarity with protocols led to inaccurate triage and uneven distribution of casualties among hospitals. Organizations had not exercised collaboration previously thus lacked familiarity with each others operations.Conclusions: Multi-organizational familiarity and training is of utmost importance. EMS protocols for MCIs are adaptable to the different systems worldwide. However, these must be drilled, examined and revised in order to ensure emergency preparedness.

Diseases like H1N1 can be prevented from becoming a wide spread epidemic through timely detection and containment measures. Similarity of H1N1 symptoms to any common flu and its alarming rate of spread through animals and humans complicate the deployment of such strategies. We use dynamic implementation of graph matching methods to overcome these challenges. Specifically, we formulate a mixed integer programming model (MIP) that analyzes patient symptom data available at hospitals to generate patient graph match scores. Successful matches are then used to update counters that generate alerts to the Public Health Department when the counters surpass the threshold values. Since multiple factors like age, health status, etc., influence vulnerability of exposed population and severity of those already infected, a heuristic that dynamically updates patient graph match scores based on the values of these factors is developed. To better understand the gravity of the situation at hand and achieve timely containment, the rate of infection and size of infected population in a specific region needs to be estimated. To this effect, we propose an algorithm that clusters the hospitals in a region based on the population they serve. Hospitals grouped together affect counters that are local to the population they serve. Analysis of graph match scores and counter values specific to the cluster helps identify the region that needs containment attention and determine the size and severity of infection in that region. We demonstrate the application of our models via a case study on emergency department patients arriving at hospitals in Buffalo, NY.

In the United States, residents and businesses in the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal regions are confronted with an increasing risk of hurricane-induced damages. It is often too costly and labor intensive to survey every structure within a large area affected by a major storm. Therefore, this paper is aimed at proposing and evaluating three sampling methods specifically designed for post-hurricane damage survey: Simple Random Sampling, Equal Spatial Sampling, and Route Based Sampling. After describing their general formation, a case study is presented in which these three sampling methods are applied to 1,020 residential houses affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, allowing for systematic and objective selection of samples for ground inspection. Then the distributions of damage conditions of samples are compared with that of population. The result shows that the sample sets selected by the Equal Spatial Sampling and Route Based Sampling methods reasonably represent the full data set with a few exceptions in high damage categories while the performance of the Simple Random Sampling is far less consistent. This work could serve as a guidance for designing a balanced sampling scheme with the consideration of expected performance and available resources in future post-disaster damage surveys.

This paper takes the current all hazards (with a special emphasis on the CBRNE) threat picture to military installations within and outside of the continental United States and their associated military communities, as well as evolving patterns of community vulnerability and changing preparedness concepts (community resilience, whole of community), as a point of departure for re-examining strategic leadership challenges (Boin et al, 2005) associated with crisis management and community-resilience development. The paper identifies two key modes of response to pervasive threat to military communities: evacuation and shelter in place. Both academic research and practical planning in both the civilian and military realms have tended to focus on evacuation to the relative neglect of shelter-in-place. The paper examines the pros and cons of each mode of response. While traditional shelter-in-place concepts have significant limitations, many of these are transcended by state of the art community-shielding strategies which provide a more robust and enhanced form of sheltering-in place. In fact, community shielding provides a potentially superior alternative in many contingencies in terms of force protection, mission assurance, and continuity of operations. The paper concludes with an agenda for improving the resilience (and crisis management) capacity of military communities.

This study takes three approaches to discover historical and potential future roles of general aviation (GA) airports in disaster response. A national survey was attempted with 500 randomly selected public use airports. 20 airports were asked the same questions in interviews and site visits, but these airports were selected on the basis of past involvement in disaster response or self-selected for the study. The third approach was an analysis of the seven state aviation disaster operations plans existing in 2010. The main conclusions are that GA airports are willing to serve in disaster response, that many of them actively seek response roles, and that GA airports are better reflected in local disaster plans than in state plans, and in state plans than in national plans. Several types of further research are recommended.

The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 requires local governments to complete pre-disaster mitigation plans, approved by FEMA, in order to be eligible for certain types of federal funding. Even with this requirement in place, many local jurisdictions in the U.S. have yet to adopt a FEMA-approved multi-hazard mitigation plan. Consequently, the percentage of a state’s population covered by such plans varies substantially from state to state. This study examined staff resources, financial resources, and disaster experience of local governments by state as factors contributing to the development of FEMA-Approved Hazard Mitigation Plans. Indicators of these measures were gleaned from multiple nationwide data sets and each measure’s relative importance was assessed via multiple regression analysis. Two measures of staff resources failed to affect the likelihood of completing approved hazard mitigation plans, while one measure of financial resources (Pre-Disaster Mitigation planning dollars per capita by state) and one measure of disaster experience (number of Presidential Disaster Declaration incidents per capita by state) had significant effects on the percentage of a state’s population covered by approved plans. Implications for promoting the development of local governments’ hazard mitigation plans are discussed.

For the past decade, over 300 programs have been developed and implemented in the field of Homeland Security. Very few exist at the doctorate level. This article shares the trials and tribulations over the past five years to create such a degree. The authors share their experiences from proposal development, through University-level approval, state approval and regional accreditation. Also, this doctorate takes on a new moniker for Homeland Security - "Civil" Security and focuses on Leadership, Management and Policy for aspiring executive-level candidates and those preparing for academia.

The Department of Homeland Security has funded an array of threat, risk and vulnerability assessment methodologies for use by law enforcement jurisdictions throughout the United States. Yet, in spite of this effort, many law enforcement agencies either do not conduct assessments or do not understand and use operationally, the information gathered in assessments. This article discusses a practitioner/researcher partnership model which successfully developed and delivered a training course to assist homeland security professionals in understanding and using operationally, information gathered by various threat, risk, and vulnerability methodologies. The model takes into consideration not only what participants needed to learn but also how they were going to learn it. This article discusses initial background research, course development, implementation, delivery, and lessons learned. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of a model which incorporates the strength of both practitioners and researchers and can be replicated to provide effective training throughout homeland security.

Planning for a disaster is often influenced by the dual factors of perception of probabilities and current technology. Response design is built upon assumptions on the size, scope, and severity of the catastrophe. Yet, history documents myriad disasters that far surpassed even the direst predictions. Similarly, response mechanisms build upon what is in use at the time in terms of equipment, transportation, and employment. Current planning factors may prove inadequate to address a disaster of historical proportion. The authors offer a review of significant disasters as a measure of the potential scope of needed medical response and the inherent shortcomings therein. They call for a more comprehensive approach to medical response planning.

The thrust of this article is to provide emergency managers with a general introductory overview of major issues involved in public emergency law and review some basic issues which comprise elements of the legal framework of crisis management. This article is designed to be an informative piece for emergency managers about the law as it relates to handling a crisis event. The goal is to increase awareness of some of the major legal issues associated with a crisis regardless of magnitude and determine the extent to which this information may guide planning, preparedness and response options for the various local and state governments involved. This article, however, the authors outline a way to encourage a dialogue between emergency managers and corporate counsel, at least annually, to review legal issues and trends. The authors’ does not present legal advice. Instead, a primary goal is to clarify and illustrate some of the emergency manager’s legal duties and point out the possible risks of legal liability.