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Recognizing and mitigating against COVID-19 consequence management impacts in emergency management organizations
Abstract
Disasters should no longer be considered along a linear timeline, where response follows preparedness, recovery follows response, and mitigation follows recovery—even if those disaster cycle phases overlap. The spiral aspects of these disaster cycle phases require communities to be in the response phase at the same time as the recovery and also mitigation phases. Emergency management (EM) organizations should use COVID-19 as the basis for a new normal as to their own continuity of operations and government. Their current model for staffing and supporting incident management is not sustainable for a long-term pandemic.The approach to any EM’s organizational response to COVID-19—and the “reset/restart” of any suspended internal actions and activities—should be consistently applied across the board through all missions, all lines of service, etc., and conducted along a standardized project-management approach, with S.M.A.R.T. goals assigned, tracked, and reported in summary and detail by utilizing a stalwart construct from emergency management through planning, organizing, equipping, training, and exercising. The EM organization’s role in their community, conducted through their people, products, and services—the tactical objectives and missions which that EM organization performs, will need to continue to adapt, not only for existing missions but also for new ones created by this pandemic as well.
... Furthermore, although the surveys suggest that PSAPs with greater resources, including backup facilities and remote dispatch systems, were able to decentralize essential functions, they do not explain how or to what extent PSAPs, especially those with fewer Our limited knowledge of how PSAPs coped with the COVID-19 pandemic reflects a general gap in our knowledge of continuity planning and organizational resilience during public health crises. Although studies have examined organizational resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to the preparedness of health systems 19 , capabilities to adopt remote work 18 , and inter-organizational coordination in disaster response systems 20 , research has overlooked how municipal agencies such as PSAPs developed continuity plans to mitigate disruptions caused by the disease while continuing to perform overlapping activities of emergency and public health response 21, 22 . Furthermore, although resilience depends on organizations' abilities to respond to and learn from crises 15 , surprisingly few studies have examined continuity planning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to learn how municipal agencies should plan for future outbreaks of communicable disease 17,23 . ...
Continuity planning prepares organizations to maintain essential functions despite disruptions to critical infrastructure that occur during crises. Continuity planning is especially important for Public-Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) which must prepare to answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders in all-hazard environments, including public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, continuity planning typically focuses on disruptions to cyber-physical infrastructure rather than social infrastructure disruptions that occur when outbreaks of communicable disease limit the ability of essential personnel to perform an organization's essential functions.
Reporting findings from interviews with U.S. officials, this study examines how PSAPs decentralized essential personnel by designing redundant workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. Realizing existing continuity plans prepared PSAPs to relocate and re-centralize essential personnel in a single, shared workplace, officials developed new plans to protect and decentralize telecommunicators across multiple, separate workplaces. To do so, PSAPs achieved passive, standby, and active workplace redundancies that recommend continuity planning objectives and requirements for organizations preparing for future public health crises.
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