Search results

The threat of future biological attacks within the United States forces the additional responsibility of preparedness and response onto health care managers. An endless amount of information on this topic can be readily obtained from a variety of sources. The purpose of this resource guide is to provide health care managers with a well-organized, up-to-date listing of credible sources that can be accessed electronically. This resource guide is designed to facilitate the retrieval of relevant information that is crucial in the process of health care managers designing a bioterrorism preparedness and response plan.

The implications of a bioterrorist attack within the United States were well observed in the 2001 anthrax attacks. The effects of these attacks were not only felt by the primary victims but also reached into communities and health care organizations that treated patients. The concerns for future attacks have spurred an enormous amount of interest and forced health care administrators to implement safety measures and develop plans encompassing preparedness and response. With respect to this topic, a major problem facing health care managers is the ability to obtain relevant, up-to-date, reliable information.

Many health care managers are aware of the endless amount of resources that are available pertaining to preparedness and response planning. It should also be noted that the information concerning bioterrorism rapidly changes and the available information can be overwhelming. To that end, the authors have compiled an array of selected websites that provide excellent, up-to-date, and unique resources in attempts to facilitate the gathering of knowledge and make that experience more efficient.

The objective of the following resource guide is to provide a comprehensive list of topics in a “user-friendly” format that can be obtained electronically. To facilitate information retrieval, electronic resources have been categorized according to topic. For example, up-to-date information concerning the multitude of biological agents can be obtained by using the links contained within the biological agents category. Under this topic heading you will find a listing of important resources. Each listing contains a heading that identifies the sponsoring organization, a short explanation of information and materials that can be expected, and a web address identifying its location.

The authors’ compilation was not intended to be exhaustive nor do the authors necessarily endorse or warrant the reliability of the information/products. Websites may change regularly; please visit www.bioterrorism@ba.ttu.edu to obtain an electronic version of this resource guide and for updates to web addresses.

Emergency preparedness (EP) is one of the crucial phases of the disaster management cycle for the built environment. The body of knowledge, therefore, reports on different preparedness standards adopted by developed countries such as the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), Canada, Japan and Australia. Other countries, however, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (in the absence of its preparedness framework), have long adapted the UK preparedness standards. This has called for this study to investigate the state of EP practices in the UAE to identify the limitations and challenges it has been facing during its preparedness phase when adopting the UK preparedness standards.

Qualitative methods of data collection and documentation with the content analysis were adopted to identify the barriers faced by the preparedness phase of emergency management (EM) in the UAE. A Pilot study was therefore conducted to validate eight key elements of the EP phase identified from the literature. The state of EP phase and the extent to which the eight key elements of EP elements were practiced and the barriers in their implementation in the UAE were explored through interviews at federal (National Crisis and Emergency Management Authority) and local levels (local team of crisis and emergency management).

The study identified eight key elements of the EP phase and the associated barriers related to their implementation in the UAE. The barriers were ranked based on their severity by interviewing experts at both federal and local levels.

This paper addresses the need to investigate the state of the EP phase, its key elements and the barriers faced during its implementation in the UAE.

Due to the absence of any EP frameworks or systems in the UAE, this paper aims to validate the EP elements identified by adopting a qualitative approach.

Several emergency public health issues have a tremendous impact on and rely upon close coordination with law enforcement officials. Most interactions involve law enforcement personnel providing security, crowd control, and/or traffic control during public health related incidents. However, as varied chemical and biological threats have emerged over the years, this interaction has increased to include joint investigations between the two disciplines. Certain biological threats, such as pandemics, pose direct threats to the law enforcement agency operations. Understanding the role of public health in emergencies, the overlapping missions, and the threats at all levels allows law enforcement professionals to better prepare themselves and their organizations for coordinating operations and maintaining continuity of law enforcement services.

There has been a long-running debate as to which is more important in the job market, education or experience. Traditionally, people have looked at these as exclusive traits of one another; however, more progressive thought sees these as complimentary attributes in perspective and existing employees that can be achieved at the same time through proactive activities such as micro-credentialing. This chapter will explore how formal and informal micro-credentialing processes can be put forward in both education and training environments.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, 2022) shows an increase in severity and frequency of natural disasters in the past years with more organisations being faced with surviving these events than ever before. The recent COVID pandemic has shown how every organisation across the globe can be affected by a disaster and the cascading effects that follow. Techniques such as micro-credentialing is a tool that can be utilised by all organisations to ensure a safer outcome from these events as well as being positioned for better continuity of critical operations through the event helping to increase the survivability and profitability of the affected organisation.

The use of micro-credentialing components successfully could be discussed using any field or discipline. To be applicable to all readers, this chapter primarily focusses on the emergency services/management discipline as an example programme of how micro-credentialing can be efficiently utilised to produce a more successful workforce. Emergency management (EM) truly is an interdisciplinary field that utilises many other fields to protect people, organisations, and communities from emergencies and disasters. More importantly, though, there are components of EM that every field should embrace for safety as well as to ensure continuity of operations through any event, thereby making the components in this chapter applicable to all readers regardless of discipline or organisation.

To advance knowledge and application of public and private coordination in the field of homeland security, disaster prevention and management.

A case study approach is utilized combined with a meta‐analysis and general literature review of relevant studies and secondary sources.

Hawaii's unique topography and geography has provided opportunities to experiment with new disaster prevention and management technologies and strategies of public and private sector coordination applicable to the Asia and Pacific region.

The analysis and synthesis of relevant studies relevant and sources from the Department of Defense (DoD) and federal, state and local agencies provide a comprehensive as well as unique context to explore and implement new strategies and improved methods of coordination in disaster prevention and management at the state, national and international level.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual foundation and empirical basis for exploring issues related to the design framework for modeling coordination in complex and dynamic enqvironments.

Previous research suggests that interactions among actors in a complex and dynamic environment tend to be more elastic, offering a higher degree of adaptability. Actions of actors in such an environment need to be coordinated to achieve the desired goal. With that purpose, the authors suggest a social network‐based (SN‐based) framework to model coordination in complex and dynamic environments.

The authors successfully applied the proposed SN‐based framework to model coordination in the context of soft‐target organization and emergency response preparedness.

It is apparent that much work has been done in existing studies on modeling coordination considering the specific domain situation in a complex and dynamic environment. In this paper, the authors propose a unique framework to model coordination in a complex and dynamic environment.

Following the disasters of 9/11/01 the U.S. government has embarked on what is intended to be a comprehensive response to the hazard of further terrorist attacks on Americans at home and abroad. This paper addresses the homeland component of the response and asserts that both the general approach and the measures being deployed are neither comprehensive nor well-balanced. The broad goal of security is losing ground to the narrower objective of defense; mitigation strategies are being overshadowed by preparedness and response alternatives; expert systems are preferred over grass-roots bottom-up ones; and possibilities for reducing human vulnerability are being ignored in favor of programs that aim to reduce risks or lessen the vulnerability of built structures and infrastructures. Preferences for the use of sophisticated technologies that are intended to quarantine terrorism and minimize its consequences far outnumber efforts to engage with the messier realm of ideas and behaviors related to terrorism. Yet it is the latter that shape the public interpretation of terrorism risks, structure patterns of exposure and affect the coping capabilities of threatened communities. Without substantial changes to policy that take account of these deficiencies, Americans are likely to find themselves little better prepared to confront the challenges of future terrorist attacks on targets in U.S. territory and the nation’s ability to address other kinds of hazards may be seriously compromised.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to understand the effectiveness of national crisis response networks (NCRN) in a broad sense, including the domains of governance, and strategic and tactical management. The chapter thus moves beyond views considering crisis response a reactive, tactical level effort. Specifically, it focuses on the role of military organizations in NCRNs.

Methodology/approach – After building a research framework based on organization and military studies, this case study examines the organizational response to the disaster that was caused by the tropical cyclone “Katrina”; the data used are qualitative.

Findings – The results highlight the ex-ante lack of preparedness of organizations to cooperate in a NCRN. Once Katrina hit in 2005, confusion and tensions permeated interorganizational relationships for a number of days.

Research limitations/implications – Implications for researchers and practitioners center on the NCRN's backbone organizations and communities potentially affected. Through tension management and network-level investments in knowledge and routines they can contribute to effective crisis response. The framework could be applied to other national crises. Case studies can be generalized in a conceptual sense.

Originality/value of paper – Katrina has been studied quite extensively yet from a crisis response perspective. This chapter offers a reflection that broadens the scope of our understanding of NCRNs, with an emphasis on the military.