Gerald Baron, Crisis Comm
The post I got the most response from was the discussion on where social media monitoring fits in the ICS structure. That is an ongoing debate and challenge. One thing is clear, with the changes in communications — specifically the role of digital communications and social media — it is necessary that the JIC or communication team be more closely connected to the operational response than ever.
The coming role of drones is an issue that will become even more intense. Drones will be flying over disasters, crime scenes and crises. The FAA or police may shoot them down, but they will be there. And the images they provide will be incredibly important for emergency managers as well as communicators. But that is already true of social media. It is proving over and over to provide invaluable situation awareness simultaneously with vitally important information (or misinformation) for communications to deal with. That will only increase. The challenge will be how to organize and manage the information flow within the entire response. The companies and agencies I have talked to about this are only now coming to grips with this situation.
Rick Wimberly, Alerts & Notifications
2014 was a year of extraordinary development in alerts, perhaps more so than in the last 10 years combined. Intense light was shined on the years-old vision of a common language of standards facilitating delivery of alerts to the array of channels people now use to communicate. Wireless Emergency Alerts via mobile devices now has impressive success stories of saving lives. Big social media companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook now offer alerts. Alerts can now replace ads on the Internet and messages on digital signs. The Emergency Alert System is stronger, although it stumbled a bit during the year. And other legacy vendors like telephone alert and siren companies aggressively opened their technology to feed alerts through all types of channels. We may be just beginning to see a time when alerts become ubiquitous. Now there seems to be more talk about how to manage alerting initiatives to take advantage of the opportunities and address the challenges.
Lucien Canton, Managing Crisis
One of the controversies we continue to wrestle with is the changing role of the emergency managers. We continue to argue over whether we are a profession or a discipline, whether education or experience should take precedence, whether our role is operational or strategic, and how we can best prepare the next generation of emergency managers. I believe that these issues stem from our lack of a clear definition of our profession. We do have a good definition in the Principles of Emergency Management, but what we still lack is a competency framework that addresses the various roles we must fulfill. Such a competency framework would need to recognize that emergency management is not monolithic; different roles require different levels of competency in different areas. It would also define which of those roles are operational, strategic or both. In turn, this would drive the development of curricula more relevant to various roles and provide the basis for certification programs. Without a competency framework, we will continue to argue about what emergency managers should be and do and never make the transition to a true profession.
Eric Holdeman, Disaster Zone
Ebola: When Ebola became an issue in Africa with the latest outbreak, questions started coming up about our preparedness levels here in the U.S. to deal with an infectious person, should they present themselves to a medical facility here. It turns out that we were not as ready as we thought we were as a medical discipline or a nation. While infectious disease protocols were in place, there were still several cases of Ebola being transmitted to medical personnel treating an infected patient. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went into full tilt mode with reinforcing what the standards are for dealing with an Ebola patient and even established a “go team” to assist any medical facility that had a confirmed case. It now appears that Ebola is endemic in Africa and there will be more frequent outbursts of infectious cases. Our posture of readiness must be maintained and there remains the concern that a new disease, like SARS, may present itself at any point in time.
Failing Infrastructure: The infrastructure in the United States is failing. Most of these failures don’t make national headlines, while some do like the 90-year-old water main break that flooded the University of California at Los Angeles campus in July and the recent power outage that disrupted downtown Detroit for a day. In reality, we have roads, bridges, pipelines and underground utilities that are failing every day. If the results are not catastrophic, they don’t make a headline other than in the community where people and organizations have been impacted. This trend of failing infrastructure is likely to pick up speed as maintenance and replacement of systems are not keeping pace with the pressures being put on aging infrastructure designed and built for the 20th century — sometimes even earlier!
Bakken Crude Oil: The rapidity with which the transportation of a much more volatile form of crude oil has surged throughout North America is amazing. Thousands of tanker cars are now transporting this commodity to refineries throughout the United States and thousands more tanker cars are programmed to be built. It has only been 18 months since the catastrophic explosion of a train of crude oil in Canada that destroyed a section of a downtown and highlighted the explosive nature of the product. Go back just two years and this hazard would not have been on emergency managers’ radar screens. Other train derailments have reinforced the explosive nature of Bakken crude. Since there are no pipeline alternatives to move the product to market, we can only expect that the quantity of crude transported will continue to grow. Increased vigilance and planning are needed to prepare for future train derailments, which while infrequent have shown that they can be catastrophic.
Cybersecurity: We are ending 2014 with an emphasis on how cyberattacks can change an organization’s intentions. The recent Sony incident is significant in that the attack sought not just to disrupt a business or to make money, rather it was terrorist-like in that it wanted to change policy. And it was successful! This is a troubling event and a benchmark against which we will measure other attacks in the future. Either the perpetrators of this attack, or others, will be emboldened to exact more policy changes due to the success that this attack enjoyed. The United States and the industrial West remain incredibly vulnerable to cyberthreats. 2014 will go down as a game changer in the history of cybersecurity.
Brandon Greenberg, DisasterNet
In the last year, we have seen significant progress for disaster management. Some of the most notable progress has been in the area of information and technology. We have seen notable achievements such as the White House Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day, a disaster-specific open data portal and numerous other innovations, many of which are detailed in this presentation. These tools and initiatives represent small steps toward solving the much larger problem of disaster information management. In 10 years, we will look back on what we’ve debated, discussed and written only to realize how novice we were in our thinking. Here are some of my favorite related posts that received a lot of attention this year:
- Why Good Information Is So Critical in Disasters
- Digital Humanitarianism Is the Future of Disaster Volunteering
- Open Data Is the Future of Disaster Management
