Emergency Management Community Research Articles

Leveraging Collaborative Partnerships to Enhance NWS and Emergency Management Communications Through Exercising

Abstract Tabletop exercises examining weather-related hazards are not uncommon but are often built around somewhat generic scenarios that only touch on the meteorological communication environment at a very shallow level. A recent exercise in central Oklahoma sought to change that. A local emergency manager, personnel from a National Weather Service (NWS) forecast office, and a severe weather researcher with a background in exercise design and facilitation worked together to create and deliver a realistic severe weather simulation. Exercise participants were exposed to detailed forecast information via NWSChat - a dedicated communication tool used to connect NWS forecasters, emergency managers, and media members for real-time information sharing. NWS forecasters were able to both actively play in the exercise due to the use of NWSChat, as well as observe how local decision makers interpreted and utilized the IDSS graphics and short-term forecast updates. The collaborative approach of developing a detailed scenario with numerous real-world Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) graphics, along with the use of NWSChat for real-time delivery, resulted in overwhelmingly positive feedback from the participants. The local emergency management office identified numerous areas for improvement in communicating real-time forecast information across their jurisdiction, along with gaps in current plans and resources. Meanwhile, the NWS forecast office had the opportunity to experiment with using the new NWSChat platform in a high-impact severe weather environment before a real-world event took place. Forecasters also gained insight into current IDSS graphic interpretation, noting areas for improved messaging to end users, such as adding storm motion to existing severe weather graphics.

Emergency Response Team (ERT) As an Emergency Management for Campus Environment

The emergency preparedness and response plan (EPRP) are a critical system for effectively handling emergencies from various hazards, including the campus of higher education institutions (HEI). The emergencies carry significant risks for employees within their workplace settings and play an integral role in risk management. This paper introduces an Emergency Response Team (ERT) as an emergency management communication for EPRP within the safety management system campus sustainability. It also assesses the ERT's capacity to manage emergencies and involvement in emergencies through the procedure and documentation to optimise emergency preparedness and response. As an organisation, the HEI is encouraged to establish an emergency response team (ERT) and a procedure as essential components of their safety management systems. The paper employs analytical reviews of the related articles to assess the ERT's functions and capacity within the EPRP for the campus sustainability of the HEI. The content analysis is used to analyse the literature review of the article. The findings revealed that an Emergency Response Team (ERT) for campus sustainability plays a crucial role in ensuring the environmental well-being and resilience of a university or college campus. This specialised team addresses and mitigates sustainability-related emergencies, such as natural disasters, environmental hazards, or infrastructure failures. Their primary goal is to safeguard the campus's sustainable infrastructure, promote eco-friendly practices, and coordinate disaster preparedness and response efforts to minimise environmental damage, support the well-being of the campus community, and maintain a commitment to long-term sustainability goals.

Multi-Hazard Extreme Scenario Quantification Using Intensity, Duration, and Return Period Characteristics

Many modern frameworks for community resilience and emergency management in the face of extreme hydrometeorological and climate events rely on scenario building. These scenarios typically cover multiple hazards and assess the likelihood of their occurrence. They are quantified by their main characteristics, including likelihood of occurrence, intensity, duration, and spatial extent. However, most studies in the literature focus only on the first two characteristics, neglecting to incorporate the internal hazard dynamics and their persistence over time. In this study, we propose a multidimensional approach to construct extreme event scenarios for multiple hazards, such as heat waves, cold spells, extreme precipitation and snowfall, and wind speed. We consider the intensity, duration, and return period (IDRP) triptych for a specific location. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by developing pertinent scenarios for eight locations in Greece with diverse geographical characteristics and dominant extreme hazards. We also address how climate change impacts the scenario characteristics.

An evaluation of factors influencing the community emergency management under compounding risks perspective

Communities in China are proactive in emergency response, significantly mitigating compounding risks and enhancing resilience. There exists a crucial need to analyze the factors influencing community emergency management, to strengthen the overall competencies of emergency response. This study examined the complex interrelationships among 15 identified factors using the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) - Adversarial Interpretive Structure Model (AISM) modeling techniques. According to the hierarchical structure determined by the AISM, three main elements emerged as critical: emergency management systems, emergency governance models, and emergency intelligence collaboration systems. These findings offer valuable insights for community administrators, providing an in-depth understanding of the vulnerabilities in community emergency management. Such findings can then guide the development of effective strategies to boost resilience and mitigate the impacts of compounding risks on Chinese communities.

Headwinds in the heartland? Hazard planning lessons from six inland jurisdictions in the southern plains

The recent 20th anniversary of the adoption of the United States’ Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA) offers an occasion to reflect on the performance of the intergovernmental policy framework it created to incentivize local hazard mitigation planning. Researchers know little about the status of local hazard mitigation planning in oft-overlooked inland communities and they know little about high-quality mitigation planning in the middle of the country. This study helps fill these gaps with a multistate, six-county comparative case study approach in the Southern Plains using data collected from the evaluation of plan documents and interviews with key informants. Our three core findings are: (1) the hazard mitigation plans tend to be of low to mediocre quality; (2) the networks of hazard mitigation stakeholders vary widely in composition and leadership, some replicating emergency management networks suited to preparedness and response and some much better suited to the quite different demands of long-term mitigation work; and (3) the types of consultants and their roles also varied across the six cases, bringing expertise characteristic of narrow emergency management perspectives to more integrated expertise in long-range land use and infrastructure planning perspectives. Without the requirements of the DMA, it is difficult to imagine that thousands of communities would have dedicated millions of dollars and untold hours to develop mitigation plans. Yet, as our findings show, the DMA is likely in need of a major overhaul, in spite of recent efforts like the new Federal Emergency Management Agency Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

The interplay of logics and social media: An organisational field perspective

AbstractThis paper examines what happens when multiple organisations with competing logics enact social media concurrently and in diverse ways. This is important in organisational fields such as emergency management where it becomes problematic if information provision is fragmented and inconsistent. A qualitative and multi‐level case study of an organisational field is undertaken, comprised of interviews with 45 representatives from 27 organisations, including emergency management organisations, government agencies, non‐government organisations, private organisations, and community groups. Based on our findings, we build understanding of how logics and the enactment of digital technology coevolve in an organisational field. We articulate a theoretical model that explains the reciprocity between logics and the enactment of social media. We also develop a framework that captures an organisational field‐level perspective on the range of ways that information flows across such a field. We contribute to theory on institutional dynamics and to understanding of the enactment of social media in organisational fields. Implications for practice are discussed.

The Extreme Weather and Emergency Management Survey

Abstract National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters have many roles and responsibilities, including communication with core partners throughout the forecast and warning process to ensure that the information they are providing is relevant, understandable, and actionable. Although the NWS communicates to many groups, members of the emergency management community are among the most critical partners. However, little is known about the diverse population of emergency managers (EMs) and how they receive, process, and use forecast information. The Extreme Weather and Emergency Management Survey (WxEM) aims to fill this knowledge gap by 1) building a nationwide panel of EMs and 2) fielding routine surveys that include questions of relevance to NWS operations. The panel was built by creating a database with contact information from more than 4000 EMs across the country. An enrollment survey was sent to the list, and over 700 EMs agreed to participate in the project. Following enrollment, WxEM panelists receive surveys three–four times per year that address how EMs use NWS forecast information. These surveys cover a variety of subjects, with the goal of working with other researchers to develop surveys that address their research needs. By collaborating with other research groups to design short, focused surveys, the WxEM project will reduce the research burden on EMs and, at the same time, increase the quality and comparability of research data in the weather enterprise. The results will be shared with the NWS and the research community, and all data gathered from these surveys will be publicly available. Significance Statement The Extreme Weather and Emergency Management Survey aims to better understand how emergency managers use National Weather Service (NWS) forecast information via a series of surveys regularly distributed to a panel of emergency managers across the country. By collaborating with other researchers, these surveys will cover broad topics and should limit the number of participation requests sent to emergency managers. Results will be distributed to participants, researchers, and NWS forecasters. All data will be publicly available.

The cycle of disparity: A gap analysis of emergency management and information technology.

Emergency management (EM) requires an appropriate understanding of its situational context in real time. This involves constant communication between emergency operations and administration, so that informed, coordinated decisions can be made in a constantly changing environment using the most critical and updated information. Challenges in EM include adapting to rapidly changing technologies, adoption, and communication. The goal of this needs assessment is to examine how the effective collection and communication of information has been affected by the technology developed to support it, to identify critical disconnects between emergency management professionals and information technology and telecommunications (ITT) professionals, and to identify opportunities for improved application and user interface development. The methods for this qualitative analysis enumerate and categorize some of the communication challenges faced by the EM community as identified by interviews conducted with subject matter experts using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats technique. This study finds that the absence of ITT professionals with experience in emergency response and, conversely, the absence of EM professionals working in EM application development create a "cycle of disparity," where the key findings of this study both arise from one central input and feed into to each of the other key findings in a continuous cycle, reinforcing what threats and weaknesses already exist.

Evaluation of Community Emergency Management Capability Based on SWOT Analysis—A Case Study

(1) Background: the community is the most basic place to maintain residents’ lives, and therefore it is urgent to strengthen community resilience construction, which is directly related to the economic development, security and stability of urban communities. (2) Methods: this article combines the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) qualitative analysis method and the AHP (Analytic hierarchy process) qualitative and quantitative analysis method to explore the current status of community emergency management in Xi’an City. A community emergency management evaluation model is constructed, which is based on six dimensions: infrastructure resilience, community organization resilience, risk hazard governance, emergency material security, emergency force construction, and emergency literacy. The evaluation index for community emergency management is established. Focusing on analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of communities in responding to sudden public health emergencies, opportunities and threats are identified. (3) Results: it was concluded that infrastructure resilience and emergency material support are community strengths, community organizational resilience is a community weakness, the emergency literacy dimension is a community opportunity, and risk and hazard management and emergency force construction are community threats. The results of the data research were further analyzed. (4) Conclusions: The final research results provide new theoretical support for community emergency management, while also providing theoretical and methodological references for emergency capacity evaluation in other fields.

Supporting the Emergency Management Pipeline: How Institutions of Higher Education can Increase the Emergency Management Career Goal for Students to Enhance Disaster Preparedness and Response Globally

Introduction:The local, national, and global disasters have increased the demand for Emergency Management professionals. Institutions of higher education can play a key role to support and respond to this demand. One institution of higher education responding to this demand is Anna Maria College (AMC). AMC is a four-year, independent, Catholic institution accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education, which was formerly known as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Established in 1946 by the Sisters of Saint Anne, the College was founded to increase access to quality education, educational innovation, and respect for service to others through development of the total human being. AMC offers exceptional professional programs at all degree levels, especially in community-oriented professions, propelling students to lives of civic, spiritual, and personal consequence. Based on the number of public safety majors and their networks, an area of interest has become how the college could contribute and respond to the demand for emergency managers.Method:These search resources were used: Chronicle, HigherEd jobs, Indeed, GoogleScholar Emergency Management majors curriculum, with searches from 2012 onward. Keywords used included emergency management jobs, higher education emergency management curriculum, public safety and community networking, disaster, and emergency preparedness, and filling the emergency management pipeline.Results:Data collection and analysis planned for completion by February 2023.Conclusion:Higher education can support the pipeline to narrow the gap and respond to the demands for trained and educated community members in disaster and emergency preparedness. Higher education responses include strategies such as, creative emergency management curriculum and community networking.

An Evaluation Approach of Community Emergency Management Ability Based on Cone-ANP.

In order to improve the emergency management ability of urban communities in response to emergencies and reduce the losses caused by emergencies, based on the method of Cone-Analytic Network Process (Cone-ANP), a whole-process community emergency management ability evaluation method was proposed. Using around 25 evaluation indexes from six dimensions, namely infrastructure resilience, community organization resilience, risk management, emergency material support, emergency force building, and emergency literacy, this method established the dominant relationship of each index by the analysis of the cone network structure. It determined the community safety culture construction as the cone-top element, and obtained the limit weight vector of all the evaluation indexes by expert evaluation. The membership degree of each index was calculated to quantify the evaluation results of community emergency management ability. The results could provide a guidance and reference basis for community emergency management.

Study on the Evaluation of Emergency Management Capacity of Resilient Communities by the AHP-TOPSIS Method

Community emergency management is directly related to the safety of people's lives and properties and is concerned with economic development and social stability. This paper established an evaluation model of community emergency management capacity from the perspective of resilience based on hierarchical analysis (AHP) and distance between superior and inferior solutions (TOPSIS). In terms of infrastructure resilience, community organizational resilience, risk, and hidden danger management, emergency material security, emergency force construction, emergency literacy, and the evaluation index system of resilient community emergency management capacity were improved. By the AHP method, the weights of all indexes were determined scientifically. Combined with the TOPSIS method, the fit of the evaluated object which between the positive and negative ideal solution was calculated to determine the optimal evaluation among multiple experts. According to the validated assessment, the low-scoring indicators were analyzed to make practical suggestions for improvement. The results provide new theoretical methods and technical support for the assessment of community emergency response capacity, which also provides reference for the assessment of emergency response capacity in other fields.

Study on community governance during COVID-19

COVID-19 has challenged China's traditional model of community governance. This article discusses the existing problems and optimization strategies of community gridding management, advocates the value concept of diversified governance, solves the problems of low efficiency of community governance, weak community emergency management ability and so on, and improves the resilience of community governance. This article puts forward some strategies, such as paying attention to special groups in communities, actively absorbing social forces, expanding informatization and digitization application scenarios, to establish the operation mechanism of the community and improve the ability of community governance under multiple risks.

Camera Network for Use in Weather Operations, Research and Education

Abstract Camera technology has evolved rapidly over the last decade; photo quality continues to improve while cameras are getting smaller, more rugged, and cheaper. One outcome of this technological progress is that cameras can now be deployed remotely at low-cost wherever solar power and wireless communication are available. While numerous camera networks are deployed nationwide to survey traffic conditions and monitor local security, the adoption of cameras as a weather observing tool is relatively new. The New York State Mesonet (NYSM) is a network of 126 weather stations deployed across the state of New York, collecting, archiving and disseminating a suite of atmospheric and soil variables every 5 minutes. One unique feature of the NYSM is that every station is equipped with a camera. Still images are collected every 5 minutes coincident with the standard environmental data during daylight hours, and hourly during the overnight hours. Since installation of the first station in 2015, the camera network has proven to be an essential element of information gathering, a critical data source for the forecast and emergency management communities, and a unique teaching resource of pictorial and visualized learning for kindergarten through high school (K-12) education. More specifically, the camera network supports (1) weather operations, (2) commercial applications, (3) data quality control, (4) site metadata, (5) site security, and (6) research and (7) educational opportunities. This article will review the many benefits, some challenges, and the future functional applications of cameras as part of an observation network. A strong case is made for making cameras an essential component of every weather station.

Empowering Indigenous natural hazards management in northern Australia

Northern Australia is prone to recurring severe natural hazards, especially frequent cyclones, flooding, and extensive wildfires. The region is sparsely populated (≪ 0.5 persons km−2), with Indigenous (Aboriginal) residents comprising 14% of the population, and typically the majority in remote regions. Despite national policy committed to addressing emergency management (EM) in vulnerable Indigenous communities, implementation remains unfunded. We synthesise participatory intercultural research conducted over seven years exploring core challenges, opportunities and potential solutions towards developing effective EM partnerships. Similar EM engagement and empowerment issues face First Nations and local communities in many international settings. In search of solutions, we explore developing effective partnership arrangements between EM agencies and culturally diverse Indigenous communities. Observing that government already provides substantial investment in cultural and natural resource management programmes conducted by over 150 Indigenous Ranger Groups (IRGs) nationally, we demonstrate that expansion of IRG roles to incorporate EM community engagement and service delivery can provide multiple cost-effective community and business development benefits for many remote communities.

Assessing Virginia cooling centers as a heat mitigation strategy.

In the United States, heat kills more people on average than any other weather-related hazard, thus the mitigation of heat-related impacts remains a significant issue within emergency management and public health communities. Research indicates the use of community cooling centers as an effective way to reduce vulnerability and adverse heat impacts. Using the Commonwealth of Virginia as a study location, this research evaluates the placement of cooling centers and assesses emergency managers' understanding of heat-related issues. Surveying local emergency managers and aggregating media reports, a total of 256 cooling centers were identified across 39 localities. Vulnerable populations differed in their proximity to the identified cooling centers. While over 65 percent of Virginians live within a 15-minute drive of a cooling center, this favors wealthier community members; less than 7 percent of Virginia's population below poverty lives within this same 15-minute driveshed. Spatial variability exists with many communities not opening any cooling centers. Within city and county hazard plans, the inclusion of comprehensive heat-related hazard information remains low. The research suggests further cooperation across government and nongovernment agencies is needed to improve the resilience to heat-health concerns across Virginia.

CAS Theory Perspective of Community Emergency Management Factors and Coping Strategies

With the rapid development of community culture and economy, people pay more attention to the frequent occurrence of community accidents. In order to protect the life and property safety of community residents and establish a safe and harmonious community, how to carry out rapid and effective emergency management of community accidents has become the focus of every community manager must think. Based on the theory of complex adaptive system, this paper discusses how to form the characteristic emergency management system for community by taking the gas explosion of Shenyang hotel as an example. The results show that in the community emergency management, in addition to the four management elements of human, material, environment and system, a dual emergency mode should be established with the community emergency response team as the leader and the fire medical support force to improve the emergency handling and response capacity of community accidents, and effectively reduce the loss of life and property of residents.

Flood Markup Language – A standards-based exchange language for flood risk communication

Floods are one of the most frequently occurring natural disasters. There are numerous studies devoted to comprehending and forecasting flooding in order to aid in preparedness and response. It is critical to share and communicate datasets generated by various systems and organizations for flood forecasting and modeling. The majority of organizations share limited metadata and details for flood risk data to support research and operational activities. However, there is no standardized way for various stakeholders and automated systems to exchange flood forecast and alert data. This article proposes the Flood Markup Language (FloodML) as a data communication specification for extensively describing and exchanging flood forecasts and alerts with corresponding stakeholders. FloodML is applicable to a broad range of data sharing use cases and requirements for emergency management, the research and modeling communities, and the general public.

Study of Urban Community Emergency Management in Huizhou, China

This paper focuses on the study of urban community emergency management in Huizhou, China. An index system for urban community emergency management evaluation which has two levels is established in the study. The index system consists of six primary indicators and twenty-two secondary indicators. The weights of the indicators are determined by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The established evaluation system is used to evaluate the emergency management ability of a community called Xuefu Community in Huizhou, China. Purpose sampling is used in the evaluation. A questionnaire with twenty-three questions is designed and all community staff are invited to answer the questionnaire. Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation method is adopted to calculate the scores and resulted are analysed. Suggestions are given to the Xuefu Community and local government based on the analysis.

Storms of a feather tweet together: An exploratory study examining Houston-area emergency management communication on Twitter in Hurricane Harvey.

The 2017 hurricane season was particularly troublesome in the Atlantic Ocean Basin. Two storms in particu-lar-Hurricanes Harvey and Irma-severely affected the southeastern United States and Gulf Coast, causing over $175 billion in damage and killing over 200 people. This study seeks to examine Twitter content that emerged from a Houston-area emergency management account during Hurricane Harvey. Specific emphasis is placed on the quantity of emergency management retweets, linguistic characteristics and similarities, and the emergence of opinion leaders in this disaster discussion. Results are discussed with respect to future risk communication in weather events, in addition to comparing with other recent disasters.