Lecture on Emergency Response Management

1. OHS 214:
EMERGENCY RESPONSE
MANAGEMENT
- 2 CREDIT UNITS
By
Abdul Muizz MUKTAR
(PhD Candidate, Mphil, Bsc, Cert-TCM)
Topic: The Organizational Challenges of Disaster
Response

3. Introduction
 Agenda
1. Conditions
2. Challenges for Emergency Response
3. Critical Success Factors
4. Obstacles to efficient Emergency Management
5. Effective Network Structure
6. Conclusion

4. Conditions
Increase of extreme events and disasters in
almost every area in the world
Diversity of reasons (e.g. extreme weather
events, terrorist threads)
Emergency management becomes more
complex and more

5. Conditions
Focus on: - Problems of interagency collaborations and
- the role of networks to achieve collective success in
emergency response operations.
The collective success and
utilization of all available
capacities will largely depend
on how well organizations
can coordinate their activities
and resources in these
situations.
Increase of extreme events
Emergency management become
more complex and specialized
Diversity of Reasons

6. Challenges for Emergency Response
 Emergency response demands a broad range of agencies
(e.g. fire and rescue services, police, health facilities )
 Depending on the circumstances other services like National
and state agencies, private companies, non-profit
organizations and volunteers are required. (Including the
military)
 These organizations differ regarding their skills and
specializations.

7. Challenges for Emergency Response
Situational Conditions
 Diversity: Emergency response missions vary widely (e.g.
local, regional or trans-border) - the required skills and the
forms of cooperation are interrelated.
 Interdependency: Teams partly depend on each other to
perform their tasks (e.g. sequential vs. parallel activities)
 Dynamic: Rapid changing conditions, importance of
improvisations, adaptability and creativity
 Uncertainty: A lack of information can lead to ambiguous
assessments and wrong decisions. => sharing of information is
essential.

8. Challenges for Emergency Response
Duties and Responsibilities
Organizational challenges in the search and rescue phase:
Goal Setting: The assessment of the situation, the derived
mobilization of resources (based on an accurate estimation of
need)
Problem Solving: Emergency managers have to innovate,
adapt and improvise because plans and procedures often
don´t fit the circumstances
Anticipation: Effective emergency management captures the
need to anticipate future problems, creating their solution
before they occur.

9. Critical Success Factors
Coordination
 Among response agencies
(e.g. combining of resources,
sequencing of actions)
 In an extreme event it
generally involves
coordinating multi-
organizational,
intergovernmental and
intersectional response and
recovery operations
Communication
 The effective flow of
information across
organizational boundaries,
to ensure common
situational awareness
 Communication of current
status allows leaders and
teams to make informed
decisions

10. Obstacles to efficient Emergency
Management
Barriers to coordination
 Stress and time pressure,
unwillingness to work with
others
 Different priorities (E.g.
diverse perspective between
public and private sector
organizations)
 Inconsistent procesures
 Conflicts over emergency
roles and domains
 Lack of leadership (E.g.
managing necessary
linkages)
 Lack of knowledge, skills and
experience (E.g. how
different organizations are
embedded in the structure)
 Lack of shared situational
awareness
 Lack of trust

11. Obstacles to efficient Emergency
Management
 Disrupted communication
systems
 Distribution (face-to-face vs
virtual collaboration)
 Asynchronous
communication (E.g. Some
degree of delay in
transmission of information)
 Lack of understnding
(common language)
 Lack of continuous feedback
to regulate action and
maintain alignment
 Lack of technical structure
 Lack of information value
(E.g. richness of information
transmitted among
organisations)
Barriers to communication

12. Effective Network Structure
 Development of an effective network structure is a challenge
and an opportunity for future disaster management
 Networks in general are relations of interaction between
actors
 An enterprise network consists of a number of autonomous
organisations, in order to achieve goals mutually, which cannot
be reached by them separately. (Chisholm 1996)
Transferred to the field of disaster- and crisis-management a
network of governmental and non-governmental
organisations offers the possibility to face future disaster
situations and its developments.

13. Effective Network Structure
Advantages of a network structure:
1. Common actions synergies
2. Inter-organisational learning
3. Mutual knowledge about processes and methods => new input
4. Organisations complement their competencies with other
5. organizations in the network
6. Networks offer the possibility to identify trends and new
7. developments in disaster management
But...networks can only work efficiently by common exchange of knowledge

14. Effective Network Structure
For a network structure it is necessary to analyse the different
requirements:
 Need to identify the competencies of the potential operators in
the network
 Need of an assignment method
 This method must combine the task and its ideal operators in
the networks
 The method needs criteria of evaluation for the assessment of
assignment:
- Is the assignment of task to operator effective?
- Are all requirements taken in to consideration?

15. Effective Network Structure
 The assignment
 by the external and internal dimension:
 External dimensions describe the disaster situation
 Internal dimensions deal with the knowledge, methods and
experience of the different organisations within the network.
 Immaterial resources are know-how, knowledge, methods, and
the experience of the employees. The assignment of tasks for
the network participants is important for the success of the
tasks. This means that the network material and immaterial
resources are criteria concerning the assignment of tasks.

16. Effective Network Structure
 Approach
 to build a network structure and a possible assignment method for
disaster management tasks:
1. Creating awareness of the need to cooperate in a network
2. Presenting the possibilities and options of the network
3. Describing the organisations, their resources and requirements
4. Start the network exchange, first locally (then regional,...)
5. Examination of effective functioning of the network by exercise
6. Creating trends and future scenarios, analysis of the situations, and
development of action plans in the network
7. Continuous cooperation in the network

17. Conclusion
 Each enterprise develops strategic plans for the next years.
 Governmental organisations generate and develop plans as
well.
 A network of all involved parties and organisations creates the
possibility to develop strategies and plans mutually for future
prevention actions.
 Knowledge and experience of individual participants get a new
usability by being connected and linked in a network.
 And this new usability is greater than the sum of its individual
parts.

18. Conclusion
 We have described the conditions and main problems for
emergency management
 We have described the idea of a inter-organizational Network
as a standard in crisis- and disaster management
 We have purposed the first steps to build a network
 Scenario thinking within the network and its members
Realisation and concrete steps

19. Assignment
 In a table form, state the agencies involved in disaster
response in Ghana; both state-owned and non-state owned.