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NOTICE:
TIEMS Transportation Safety and Security Workshop January 28-29th 2003
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Welcome to
the
Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management
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| January 2003
Volume 3 - Number
4 |
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Links:
Current events
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Research and Development in Emergency Management
By Eric Schmidt
Abstract
This paper will address four issues; 1) description of how the emergency management research organization has functioned prior to September 11, 2001; 2) description of new proposed approaches on emergency management research organization after September 11, 2001; 3) analysis of the new proposed approach versus the prior approach on the emergency management research organization; and 4) recommendations for the future emergency management research organization. Emergency management issues have not enjoyed a history of organized applied research and development efforts in the past. The advances that have been made were simply a repetition of what worked in the past, re-worked and applied again. This repetitive cycle does have the advantage of offering a proven model to use. However, it does have a shortfall – as new challenges face the emergency management community it presumes the last event will be like the next event. Fallout from this circumstance is the delay of adapting new technologies to areas of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. One of the many goals outlined in for newly created Department of Homeland Security is to consolidate and prioritize the vast array of homeland security related research and development projects. The unanswered question still remains; how will these projects be evaluated and what emphasis will be placed on “all-hazards” initiatives in the future. It can be argued that at least an organizational structure to review and accomplish some research in this arena is better that what was in place before, which was random projects with mixed results. On the other hand, sometimes the perception that something is being done is worse then the knowledge that nothing is being accomplished. Given the list of research and development tasks and the vast resources the newly created Department of Homeland Security acquired, it is difficult to foresee that any significant focus will be given to “all-hazards” issues such as wildfire, structure fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane, tornado. These issues simply will not suspend their occurrence because resources are being assembled to meet man-made technological threat’s that face this Nation. Many of the recommendations contained within this paper are suggestions for specific public/private partnerships. These partnerships can be combined to leverage research and development resources to vastly improve the emergency management capabilities at the federal, state and local levels of government. Many of these resources all ready exist in our universities and in many federal agencies, simply by bringing them together in a collaborative effort will improve the ability to transfer new ideas and technologies to the state and local levels where the bulk of emergency response activities reside. To Full Paper |