Shared Situational Awareness in Emergency Management Mitigation and Response

Abstract

The US is replacing its historical federalist concept of emergency management where primary responsibility resides with state and local governments and their emergency management and first responder resources for coordinating emergency response and recovery, supported by the resources federal government (coordinated by FEMA) with a homeland security national response system where response to events is controlled by DHS using a military command and control model. This model assumes that those controlling and coordinating the response and recovery would attain and maintain an accurate, shared common operating picture and situational awareness. The objective of this paper is to discuss why the transfer of this concept from its safety and combat origins to the complex, heterogeneous emergency management structure of the United States would would be exceedingly difficult, and that short term strategies based on the assumption that shared situational awareness would be easily achieved are doomed to failure