Canton on Emergency Management

Alien invasion and leadership

You just have to love publicity people. To drum up interest in the new National Geographic television series Chasing UFOs the PR folks commissioned a survey of of some 1,114 Americans regarding their attitude towards extraterrestrials. Among the more interesting conclusions was that 65% of those surveyed believe President Obama would be better suited to handle an alien invasion than contender Mitt Romney.

In developing our emergency plans we (quite rightly) try to make them independent of personality. However, the culture of an organization and its leadership have a great deal to do with success in dealing with crisis. One person can make a difference for good or ill, in crisis and the group perception of the person in charge can significantly affect group performance.

So as you develop and test your plans, keep in mind the human factor. How suited is your leader to dealing with crisis? What can you put in place to assist him or her? How will you cope if they are unavailable? Never forget that no matter how good your plan, it is the team that executes that plan that make it successful. And the performance of that team will depend on the leadership skills of the team leader.

Emergency Management Solutions: June 2012 Manager or Technician?

Emergency Management Solutions June 2012

Manager or Technician? Improving your role as an emergency manager

Download Manager or Technician Jun 2012

Climate change meets realpolitik

We sometimes assume that risk and mitigation are absolutes. We think of risk as something quantifiable and logical and that, by extension, efforts to reduce risk are also logical. However, we forget or ignore research that shows that objective risk, perceived risk, and mitigation are only loosely coupled. Risk perception of the community ultimately determines the effectiveness of mitigation.

Take for example the law under consideration in North Carolina. The state's Coastal Resource Commission recommended planning for a 39 in rise in coastal sea levels by 2100. Business interests, concerned over the effects of this planning on coastal development, have supported a bill that would ignore climate change reports based on scientific studies and use only historical data in determining sea level rise. The catch is that the data is limited to data after 1900 and allows for only linear extrapolation of the data rather than more accurate methods.

Lawmakers in Virginia faced similar opposition in trying to base their planning on scientific evidence by commissioning a study on sea level rise. In this case local Republicans believe that "climate change" and "sea level rise" are liberal buzzwords and were prepared to block any study using those terms. Changing the term "sea level rise" to "recurrent flooding" allowed the study to pass muster without opposition.

Mitigation has always been a hard sell particularly where it comes into opposition with business interests. It's sad to see ideological political opposition to the science on which we base effective mitigation. And what does it say about our politicians' understanding of the issues when a name change is all it takes to remove their opposition? 

Emergency Management and Higher Education

I had the privilege this week of delivering the keynote address to the Higher Education Conference hosted by FEMA at the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, MD. This annual conference brings together several hundred educators from across the US (including some international visitors) who are involved in the delivery of degree programs in the fields of emergency management and homeland security.

It's a humbling experience to address my colleagues here because I have come to realize over the years that the work they do is absolutely vital to the continued professionalization of emergency management. First, they do the research that forms the specialized body of knowledge for our profession. Their work provides us with the empirical data that should form the basis of our emergency management programs.

More importantly, they are training the next generation of leaders in emergency management. These graduates have a solid grounding in theory and practice and are encouraged to gain practical experience through internships and volunteer work. They are better equipped for an unclear future than many of us older managers were when we came to emergency management as a second career. And we owe this to the educators who have worked hard with limited resources to make higher education programs in emergency management a reality.

If you are not familiar with FEMA's Higher Education Program, visit their website at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/ If you are fortunate enough to have an educational institution near you offering one of these programs I urge you to offer your support, either by providing instructional support or an internship. It's a solid investment in our future.