Critical Issues in Disaster Science and Management: A Dialogue Between Researchers and Practitioners includes 12 sections written from the views of more than 20 emergency management practitioners and researchers. The 12 sections are dialogues on:
- Whole community — state, local and federal relationships
- Volunteers and nonprofits in disaster
- Public-private partnerships
- Access and functional needs
- Public health preparedness
- Planning and improvisation
- Reflections on the National Incident Management System
- Long-term recovery
- After-action reporting for exercises and incidents
- Social media
- Professionalization of emergency management
- Unmet needs and persistent problems
The book was conceived mostly with students in the Higher Education Program in mind but was written for practitioners as well. “We wanted an approach that would hopefully stimulate a broader conversation about emergency management practice and research and what each has to offer the other,” Trainor said.
“What we’ve done was to illustrate not only that the divide exists but most importantly, how to go about bridging that divide between academics and the practitioners so the two can move forward together,” Subbio said.
Each of the authors, a researcher and a practitioner for each topic, penned a part of a section and then, their sections and collaborated on a summation or conclusion. The conclusion talked about areas of agreement, areas of disagreement and ways to bridge the gaps.
“We expected there would be differences, and in some chapters you see differences but for the most part where we expected huge differences the author teams pointed out that the differences weren’t that significant and the real challenge was sharing the information between academia and practice,” Subbio said.
As an example in the social media discussion, the academic section focused on the concepts around social media, participation in social media, citizen feedback and the idea of how social media changes the ability to share information and develop partnerships.
The practitioner side discussed the pragmatics of social media, rumor control and how to get feedback from citizens but in the context of having to do it with limited resources.
The public health preparedness section revealed an evolution of ideas coming together where they hadn’t in the past, say the editors.
“There’s a real synergy between what’s going on between the academic side and the practitioner side,” Trainor said. “Ten years ago, pre-anthrax, H1N1, etc., emergency managers and public health people didn’t work together, they didn’t know each other and the same is true of emergency management researchers and public health research. They didn’t connect.”
In the end, what the book tries to accomplish say its editors, is to bring researchers and practitioners together to bridge the gaps.
