Emergency planning is, therefore, a continous activity which is used to plan for unforeseen impacts and how to manage them when they occur by providing the procedures for such a venture. Failure to plan therefore can be understood as negligence due to the failure to anticipate the needs and procedures which cannot be improvised adequately during an emergency.
Emergency Management: Preparedness
is one section in which managers find it hard to have adequate planning for the execution of activities when they occur. This is essentially because it requires a corperative and a coordinative process that would match the needs required by the facilities and resources available. There are several stages of planning which are fundamental for an effective preparedness plan; and they include, research, analysis, dissemination, experimenting and updating of the plans. At any given moment, the emergency plan should be a living document which is constantly updated to the changing circumstances. This is in the sense that it provides clear cut and precise guides to the procedures, protocols and the divisions of duties and responsibilities in cases if the response to an emergency (Alexander, 2005). Emergency planning is, therefore, a continous activity which is used to plan for unforeseen impacts and how to manage them when they occur by providing the procedures for such a venture. Failure to plan therefore can be understood as negligence due to the failure to anticipate the needs and procedures which cannot be improvised adequately during an emergency.
However, there are critical challenges which these emergency planners endure when they are developing an emergency planning guide or systems. One of the challenges which have given emergency planners problems is the magnitude of the event which the plans should be configured (Dillon, 2014). This can be based on the assumption that disasters which occur are in a recurrent steady state which is then coupled with a happy medium disaster. This is in the sense that the disaster which happens is neither too small or too big for the contingency plans of the managers to fail to manage effectively. Also, there is improbability of the event to fail to occur frequently during the life of the plans already laid out and would not require extreme response resources and plans.
The problem with this arrangement is that in the event of the planning of emergency response, there has never been a time when proper and adequate frequency and magnitude of a disaster has been established. Therefore, in this case, is that the occurrence of a disaster cannot be adequately scientifically determined rather than being conjectural. The other problem with this kind of assumption and which gives a great challenge to managers is that the time of occurrence of the disaster might be non-stationary. Terrorism is one of the issues which cannot be planned in totality. This is because there are many ways in which terrorism can be perpetuated and would invite many stakeholders to the matter. Therefore, having adequate planning would require constant updates on the political and economic dynamics of the region (chapter 1) This can be explained with the understating that many of scientist are in consensus that climate change is occurring, but they have different opinions on the speed in which it will have an immense impact on the world (Oliver, 2014). Despite that there is the probability of great casualties, there will be complications due to the perception of people and their behavior to risks and disasters.
The second critical challenge to the emergency planners is the disharmony in specialized emergency planning on all sections of the society. It is determinable that a disaster or hazard can happen and require the attention of all sectors which provide services to the people.
These include the hospitals, roads and other transportation infrastructures, educational institutions, the law enforcement departments, private sectors and non-governmental organizations inclined to disaster management (American Red Cross, 2007). There is a sense in which failure for any of these sectors to have an appropriate and updated disaster management plan will lead to serious risks and casualties in the event of a disaster.
It is desirable that the government can inititate the policy not to include the community which is also a stakeholder in the management of disasters. This is because there are chances where it can reduce investment and tourism prospects and that developers will have little profits on development (chapter 2) Therefore, this gives emergency planners the challenge of requiring to be at par with other well-funded organizations or sectors or the managing for those who are below the normal expectations of emergency planning (Alexander, 2005). According to Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans, (2010) the involvement of the community as a stakeholder is very daunting because there are misperceptions about the interests of the community and its security. Therefore, to understand how a community will be effective in the management of disasters is always a challenge for planners.
Due to the interdependency of these sectors, it is daunting for largescale planning or hazards and disasters and has all stakeholders on board. There is always that sector of the society which is reluctant and slow to adapt to the changing circumstances and therefore it requires emergency managers to factor it in its planning. Therefore, they will have to factor those sectors to have an effective guide. There are some of the disasters which are caused by the failure of others to have a proper disaster management and prevention (Dillon, 2014). Therefore, if educational institutions do not have adequate preventive and disaster management operations, it will make the other sectors to have difficulties. For example, without an educational institution having a fire assembly point or proper places for evacuations, there will be challenges in the mitigation of the case of a hazard.
The other challenge for event management planning is on the internationality of disasters which is something contemporary to event managers to consider and its financial implications. It is determinable that cross-border disasters are common occurrences and any increase in the strength and size of the disaster will inevitably cause challenges to event managers of places visited by the hazards (Oliver, 2014). This is because, many of the plans which are put in place are usually local, regional to deal with domestic issues. This is because the international ones are less predictable and almost impossible to determine if there are complex diplomatic relations between neighboring nations. This is in the sense that there could be financial constraints to manage such large-scale operations considering internationalization of the planning (American Red Cross, 2007). There is a sense in which where a country can have budget cuts in certain sectors of the society. this, therefore, can throw valid emergency programs in disarray. This can be especially to governments which would not consider with assumptions to finance emergency preparedness on disasters which are thought to take millenniums to happen.
To conclude, emergency planning needs to be a cooperative venture which requires the attention and input of all sectors of the society. It is bound by democratic participation, responsibilities, and question of rights. With these challenges, there is the need to have a mainstream emergency planning process which will go over these challenges and have an efficient and effective response to emergencies.
References
Alexander, D. (2005). Towards the development of a standard in emergency planning. Disaster Prevention and Management, 14(2), 158-175.
American Red Cross. (2007). Emergency planning guide. Washington, DC: American Red Cross.
Dillon, B. (2014). Blackstone’s emergency planning, crisis and disaster management, (2ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans. (2010). Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101, Version 2.0.
Oliver, C. (2014). Catastrophic disaster planning and response. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
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