Emergency Management Utilities Earthquake Awareness Month: Preparing for the “Big One” February 9, 2021 by Addison Shaw Despite how prone an agency, municipality, or community is to earthquakes, it's possible to prepare. Many states and areas across the US dedicate February to earthquake awareness, hoping to prepare their residents and stakeholders for these events. Read more »
Emergency Management How Higher Education Can Practice Point of Distribution (POD) Exercises October 29, 2020 by Addison Shaw That COVID-19 vaccine will need to be distributed, and local organizations may be tapped to help out. Colleges and universities may be part of that cohort. Participating schools will need to run points of distribution (PODs) to accomplish this. And if a school's staff is unfamiliar with this type of operation, a practice run is worth their time. Read more »
Emergency Management Revisiting the CARES Act: What It Means for Local Governments October 9, 2020 by Addison Shaw Lately, things are moving weirdly fast. We're less than 3 months away from that December deadline. So if your organization does have leftover funds from the CARES Act to spend, how can your team best use those funds? Read more »
Emergency Management Taking Another Look at ICS in 2020 September 24, 2020 by Addison Shaw 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. Read more »
Emergency Management Managing Multiple Emergencies August 25, 2020 by Addison Shaw 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? Read more »
Operations Management Making Resource Requesting and Asset Management More Efficient August 13, 2020 by Addison Shaw 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. Read more »
Emergency Management Integrating CAD, Emergencies, and Planning August 6, 2020 by Addison Shaw One of the most used pieces of tech in this industry are CADs (computer-aided dispatch systems). However, CADs are often closed systems that capture all the data emergency services need. But there is an opportunity for these systems (depending on how they're built) to integrate with other tools employed by emergency services. Read more »
Pandemic COVID-19 and Higher Ed: Preparing for the Fall Semester July 16, 2020 by Addison Shaw Despite thorough emergency and continuity planning and responses, the fall semester is still up in the air. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is extremely infectious, and puts immense pressure on higher education institutions to find a safe approach for educating students in the fall. Some schools have already started exploring the idea, and have come up with a few key points and ideas to consider or include in a return-to-school plan. Read more »
Pandemic Reopening Part 1: Return to the Office July 14, 2020 by Addison Shaw The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of us to completely reconsider and restructure our work lives. Eventually, however, we will return to a form of normalcy. For organizations, this means planning the return to work, and ensuring it goes properly. And because this will most likely happen before the pandemic is truly over, organizations will need to put strict measures in place to contain the spread of the virus. Read more »
Aviation Pandemic What Does COVID-19 Mean for Airports? July 9, 2020 by Addison Shaw The COVID-19 pandemic has touched every part of our society. The economy, and the markets and businesses within it, have been forced to change—or radically transform—to stay afloat during this time. Read more »
