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Policy Issue on Emergency Management  2009 PPSA/LORL, PA House of Reps. ISSN 0890-2410

Emergency Management:
Selected Policy Issues

Beverly A. Cigler, PhD
Penn State Harrisburg

Every inch of our land, air, and water is vulnerable to disaster. The
complexity of emergency management (EM) and its growing importance
necessitates that lessons are learned, not merely noted, based on disaster
experience. This symposium examines a number of issues important to
the EM community, including state policymakers. The lessons imparted
seek to build “institutional memory” for those involved with the various
phases of EM: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

Governments alone cannot do all that is needed to deal with
emergencies. EM involves building collaborative relationships among
and between levels of government and across the public, private and non-
profit sectors. Four of the articles here deal explicitly with partnerships –
their need, development, and maintenance.

Christopher J. Moran, a Planner for the PA Region 13 Task Force,
examines an important but relatively neglected issue, the role and use of
volunteers in EM. In “Utilization of Private Resources to Supplement
Government Resources in Case of Emergency,” Moran provides an
overview of some of the key existing volunteer programs in the field of
EM. He outlines the benefits and costs of using volunteers and provides a
set of criteria to use when assessing policy options. Christopher Moran
then makes a specific programmatic recommendation for supplementing
government resources with private resources. Overall, Moran’s
contribution buttresses the important point that EM can never be fully
funded and that government must look to partnering with the private
sector.

The development of partnerships beyond individual jurisdictions is
an essential need for dealing with emergencies. State and federal
resources cannot be relied upon initially and there is a gap between when
resources are requested and when they are operationally available.
Pennsylvania has an explicit comprehensive and systematic regional
approach to emergency management. Gregory G. Noll, program



2 EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: SELECTED POLICY ISSUES

manager of the South Central Task Force (SCTF), offers an overview of
Pennsylvania’s regional approach in “Regional Response to All-
Hazards Events: A Commonwealth Perspective.” The SCTF is one of
nine regional counter-terrorism task forces formed in 1997 by the
Commonwealth to coordinate local and regional efforts in response to
acts of terrorism. Additional authorities were later granted under
Pennsylvania’s Counterterrorism Planning, Preparedness and Response
Act 227-2002. Today, the nine task forces strive to develop all-hazards
regional approaches.

Drs. Louise K. Comfort, Daniel Mosse, and Taieb Znati, all of the
University of Pittsburgh, also examine regional response in “Managing
Risk in Real Time: Integrating Information Technology into Disaster
Risk Reduction and Response.” Emergency managers increasingly rely
on decision support systems to provide real-time information for the
complex tasks of predicting, communicating, and responding to
emergencies. Various software programs already exist but, as the authors
explain, none has been particularly successful in providing the type of
dynamic, yet focused, information that emergency managers need.
Emergency managers, operating at different locations and carrying out
different functions simultaneously, require timely, valid information that
can be updated quickly as conditions change. A “common operating
picture” must be developed for the myriad of emergency managers
working at different levels of responsibility and exposed to different
degrees of risk to enable them to take more informed, effective action in
a coordinated response for a region.

The authors present information on a prototype decision support
system under development at the University of Pittsburgh. The
Interactive, Intelligent, Spatial Information System (IISIS) Laboratory
focuses on the degree to which the capacity of a region to respond to
shared risk can be enhanced by innovative information technologies. A
community’s capacity for response is considered as a dynamic inter-
organizational system characterized by four key decision points: 1)
detection of risk; 2) recognition and interpretation of risk for the
immediate context; 3) communication of risk to multiple organizations in
a wider region; and 4) self organization and mobilization of a collective,
community response system to reduce risk and respond to danger. The
decision points embrace individual, organizational, and system levels of
aggregation and communication of information that are used to create a
“common knowledge base” that supports collective action to reduce risk.



Beverly A. Cigler 3

The authors develop five propositions as part of a conceptual framework
for building resilience in communities exposed to recurring risk.

The Joint Readiness Center, located at the Air Reserve Station in
Pittsburgh, is another noteworthy collaborative model. It was established
by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005 and has been
identified by the Department of Defense (DOD) as a Center of
Excellence in integrating civilian medical and business resources with
military assets to provide unique, flexible, and effective emergency
preparedness, response, and recovery to the nation. George A. Huber,
David R. Campbell, Keith G. Dorman, and Leigh A. McIntosh, in
“Joint Readiness Center – Pittsburgh: A Model of Military-Civilian
Readiness and Response,” describe the Center’s origin and activities.
The authors are part of the Joint Readiness Center Task Force (JRC Task
Force), a community organization that supports the Center, which is a
national model for homeland security and homeland defense.

The JRC seeks to improve the nation’s response to disasters caused
by humans or natural hazards by combining the strengths of the active
duty, reserve, and guard components of the military, including the five
armed services; federal, state and local government agencies such as the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Disaster
Medical System, Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Pennsylvania
Emergency Management Agency (PEMA); civilian practitioners skilled
in disaster management; as well as the Pittsburgh region’s extensive
healthcare resources. Realizing JRC’s full potential depends on
continuing and enhancing the collaborative between the community and
its partners.

A fifth symposium article was written by Karen Finkenbinder, a
PhD candidate at Penn State Harrisburg in Public Administration. In
“Residency Requirements for First Responders,” Finkenbinder
assesses a previously neglected issue in emergency management. The
response to the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Great Flood of New
Orleans in 2005 highlights an unacknowledged problem associated with
first responder families. Evacuation plans in New Orleans did not include
consideration of the special needs of the families of first responders. It
was difficult for police, fire, and emergency medical personnel to help
others when they were witnessing the endangerment of their families and
homes. After Katrina, New Orleans and other cities turned to rewriting



4 EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: SELECTED POLICY ISSUES

their emergency plans to consider a host of issues, including the needs of
first responders’ families.

Finkenbinder presents a balanced treatment of the residency issue,
both from the individual and community perspective. She offers a set of
pro and con arguments and places the issue within the broader
framework of federalism and related legal issues.

The sixth and final article in the symposium, “The State Role in
Emergency Management (EM): Significant Challenges,” was written
by the symposium editor, Dr. Beverly A. Cigler, Penn State Harrisburg.
She argues that the key state roles in EM are: the facilitation of local
disaster mitigation; assisting the public and elected and appointed
leadership in understanding risk and mitigating disasters; building the
capacity of first responders by strengthening their preparedness and
response capabilities; and paying increased attention to shaping the
environment in which the state and local governments operate within the
federal emergency management system. Much of the state role is direct
capacity-building directed at local governments, citizens, and first
responders, but much involves money and legal issues.


