A 21st-Century Approach to Preparedness, Response, Recovery and Mitigation

Traditionally, emergency management (EM) efforts were focused on disaster response. Only minimal EM resources were allocated to planning and preparing for an emergency, recovering and rebuilding from an emergency, or even ongoing activities that might reduce the impact or duration of an emergency event. Now, the EM community is focused on a more holistic approach of preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. However, challenges of siloed expertise, operations and resources in an increasingly interconnected operational landscape can hinder EM agencies to achieve this approach. This white paper discusses how advanced technology solutions can help EM agencies use existing systems to gather data that can drive more educated planning and response decisions, analyze that information for proper response actions and mitigation steps, then integrate those informed decisions into an effective response and recovery effort.