The incident command system (ICS), however, was developed in the 1970s, and while it’s been used and occasionally updated through the decades, it’s a good time to ask if we should update it again or if we can identify and address any of its shortcomings.

While emergency managers can effectively and efficiently respond to incidents and disasters, they can’t prevent events from happening. While it’s rare, emergencies can overlap and stress the response infrastructure emergency management teams have implemented at their organizations. What strategies can emergency managers use to respond to these unusual scenarios?

Two of the lesser known operations organizations and state and local governments perform are resource requesting and asset management. While these two operations aren’t well known, they are critical to daily operations for the organizations and governments that employ them, something the COVID-19 pandemic has only made more apparent. The importance of these operations doesn’t mean they come without their challenges. Certain steps in the processes associated with these operations can be bottlenecks, and the organizations running these operations should consider solutions that resolve and break those bottlenecks.