Emergency Management - Strategic Preparedness

 Each step of the strategic preparedness cycle is significant in reducing disaster.  Individuals,   non-governmental organizations, communities, and other entities are involved in many activities of preparedness, and all these activities are important in ensuring effective response (Paul, 2011).

• Planning- Planning is a significant step that focus on identifying the hazards risks, or rather, the hazards which are likely to occur (Haddow et al. 2011). Planning also assesses the community vulnerability and this helps determine the resources that should be planned for. It is important to note that the majority of time is spent on planning to come up with operations plans.

 

• Organization and equipment- this step is also significant in that to have an effective response, there must be equipment. It is not possible to prevent hazards without equipment, and therefore communities must have the equipment or rather effective technologies to increase responder preparedness.

 

• Training- This step should not be left out since officials cannot respond to hazard or rather they cannot assist the overall community without training (Haddow et al. 2011). Thus, training is important to prepare responders by improving their specialized competency and ensure safety management practices.

 

• Exercise- this step is significant in that through exercises such as tabletop exercises, full-scale exercises, and others, officials can understand the best actions to take in times of emergency (Haddow et al. 2011). Exercise also allows officials to become familiar with plans, policies, and procedures.

 

• Evaluation and improvement- this step is very significant in that after applying the plans, it is important to evaluate whether they worked and whether there are changes needed (Haddow et al. 2011). This will help evaluate whether there is a need for better equipment, more training, and more resources.  Evaluation and improvement are important for future planning.

 

 From the cycle of preparedness, the step that might be the most critical to communities is planning.  This is because, all the other steps depend heavily on the planning process.  Planning is the first step that dictates the equipment to perform the task, the training, and exercise needed, the other important things (Paul, 2011).  Therefore, planning is critical to the community and the individual must increase efforts on the planning process to come up with a coordinated response.  Note that planning act like guidance and the community require guidance to increase response effectiveness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 References

 

Haddow, G. D., Bullock, J. A., & Coppola, D. P. (2011). Introduction to emergency management

(4th ed.). Cambridge, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

 

Paul, B. K. (2011). Environmental hazards and disasters: Contexts, perspectives ,and

management. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.