Disaster preparedness is a very vital aspect of any organization or even an individual in any community (Academic Papers on Porter’s Strategy, n.d.). According to Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP), its major objective is provision of guiding principles that have a common response in addressing programs management, evaluation, improving planning, designing and planning of mitigation measures

1. Running head: EXERCISING THE EMERGENCY OPERATIONS PLAN 1
Exercising the Emergency Operations Plan
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Introduction
Disaster preparedness is a very vital aspect of any organization or even an individual in
any community (Academic Papers on Porter’s Strategy, n.d.). According to Homeland Security
Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP), its major objective is provision of guiding principles
that have a common response in addressing programs management, evaluation, improving
planning, designing and planning of mitigation measures. HSEEP offers stakeholders with the
necessary preparedness and opportunities to craft planning, validating and examining capabilities
together with the areas that are worth improvement. By considering the National Preparedness
Goal, the organization offer support in improving the national capacity of coming up with a
capability to deal with a real challenge. Evaluation of exercises is also carried out meeting the
strengths, improvement areas and corrective actions. Since there are numerous varieties of
incidents, the disaster managers and organization leaders should make prior preparations to
mitigate the impending risks. This paper will discuss the various principles of disaster
management as asserted by HSEEP (Martinez et al, 2019).
Having a well-designed risk mitigation plans ascertains that there are low risks in the
environment involved. Moreover, the risk preparation and readiness familiarizes the persons
involved with the responsibilities involved and the interaction and communication across the
various organizations. Achieving the desired preparation and readiness requires critical factors to
be met. The critical factors are in terms of exercises and activities carried out to prevent and help
a community recover from a disaster. In US there four main exercises that help in practicing of
preparation goal in hazards and disaster occurrence (Department of Homeland Security, 2007).
The first category comprises of exercises that are operational based. The above implies
that the preparation and readiness is inclusive of exercises that engage an organization’s

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members to perform various exercises to portray their understanding and readiness to react to a
given situation. Among the activities in this category are drills, functional exercises and full-
scale exercises. The activities mentioned earlier are important as they can be applied to make
validation on plans, procedures, policies and agreements. The prominent characteristic of the
operation-based exercise is that they are founded upon reactions to a given situation which
requires skills and expertise. For instance the Fes involves mobilization of resources and people.
They make use of numerous agencies that validates several preparatory facets. The system
operate through cooperative interactions like the Incident Command System.
Disasters have been noted to cause enormous adverse effects on the environment and also
upon daily routines of human beings. The above gives the basic reason as to why preparation in
advance for the disasters is crucial. Fire drill is among the profound methods used in preparation
of risks and disaster mitigation. Fire drill involves a scenario where employees are operating in a
corporate office and a person decides to set a fake fire to examine the response of the people in
the premise. HSEEP instruction document highlights this exercise as a vital test of how ready
people are towards a situation they get subjected to. All the members of the organization are
sensitized of the plan prior to execution. The procedure is executed in a regular time span like
annually or semiannually to keep the new members abreast with the policies. The limitation
arises in that per 294 concept affirms that having EOP is not satisfactory on its own. Execution is
the most outstanding aspect that would aid a firm in establishing a common procedure for
emergency testing (Emergency Operations Center) as Farhadi et al (2016) claims. Drilling has an
advantage in that a real life scenario gets emulated.
The other categorization includes of the discussion-based exercises. The activities are
founded upon discussion and interactive talks of education with the aim of familiarizing

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individuals with the policies, agreements, plans and new developed ideas or doctrines of
responding to situations. This subcategory majors in discussion activities which aims on meeting
the issues oriented to policies. Presenters and facilitators often take charge of the discussion as
they keep the participants on the right track on meeting exercise goals. Seminars are the most
outstanding exercises undertaken in this phase. The goal of the seminars is to orient the
participant’s plans, authorities, policies, strategies, protocols, concepts and new doctrines. Their
significance is portrayed in assessing the information awareness of a group of people or test on
the ability of interagency operations. The other aspect utilized is the workshops. The only
distinguishing feature is the enhanced interactions and aim of establishing a new product in the
risk and disaster mitigation field.
Tabletop exercises also falls under the exercise-based category where hypothesis is
applied in a simulated scene of emergency. TTXs are advantageous in that they improvise
awareness in general of individuals through validation of procedures and plans in a simple and
clear graphical manner of how to recover from a given disaster or situation. The main limitation
with the approach is that the participants of the scenario have to stay engaged and be accurate in
their insight. Besides, the simulation exercises requires expertise and more time consuming as
every exercise build upon the previous one sequentially Department of Homeland Security.
(2012). However, the approach is considered as an optimum strategy in disaster preparation is
accurate since it’s based on a real hypothetical situation. Games also play a vital role in design
and implementation of preparedness towards a disaster. A game has a number of players where
the acts of the participants result to various consequences. Hypothesis are scripted either
dynamically or made as decisions. There are almost same as TXXs only that they are

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complicated and relies on their formulation for optimum results. However, reasonable modelling
produces optimum results.
Conclusion
In summary, preparation for disaster is a necessity as it aids to evaluate the readiness of
an individual or firm to respond to a crisis. Risk mitigation plans through exercises reduces the
cost incurred by the communities involved in familiarizing with procedures and policies. The
tools refine the ability and define the preparations made in readiness to react to a situation one or
an organization is subjected to. According to Homeland Security (2012-2016), the main
objective of their plans is to ensure citizens as an organization safety and resilience against
disaster hazards and terror attacks.

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References
(Academic Papers on Porter’s Strategy, n.d.). Freelancing | Academic
Home. https://discountdealson.com/
Farhadi, S., Mohammadfam, I., & Kalatpour, O. (2016). Comparison of Usability of Two
Patterns for Developing an Emergency Scenario: ISO 22398 and Homeland Security
Exercise Evaluation Program.
Department of Homeland Security. (2007). Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation
Program. The Department.
Martinez, D., Landon, K. A., McDermott, W., Roth Jr, J., Schnall, A. H., Talbert, T. P., &
Mainzer, H. M. REPORT FROM THE FIELD.
United States. Department of Homeland Security. (2012). Department of Homeland Security
Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2012-2016. Department of Homeland Security.