INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1348 I. THE EXISTING IMMUNITY LANDSCAPE DURING A DECLARED PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY....................................................................................................... 1350 A. What Is a Public Health Emergency? ...................................................

REQUIRED) In this paper, we examine emergency response through the theoretical lens of organizational capability literature. Specifically, we theorize the crucial roles of dynamic capability and improvisational capability in improving functional competence of emergency management, which in turn determines main response outcomes such as response effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction. We als...

Decision-making in emergency response situations can be supported by location-based information. However, current location-based services do not usually provide mechanisms to deal with conflicting information. To address this limitation, multi-criteria evaluation methods recently have been implemented in mobile geographic information systems. This paper describes an emergency response scenario ...

Information systems have great potential to support emergency management. However, development of such systems is difficult, due to the complexity of emergency management. The ability to be able to reveal the needs for support are essential for successful system developments. The emergency responders at the local community level are the main actors when it comes to emergency management. The obj...

BACKGROUND Natural and manmade disasters are creating increasingly complex response challenges. The current U.S. emergency response model relies heavily upon the availability and expertise of highly trained public safety agencies. Too often, this leads the public and our leaders to assume that professional emergency medical care will be immediately available. Unfortunately, there are often dela...

Communication and information sharing during the response to a major incident on oil rigs have been identified as significantly influencing capability to control, manage, and limit the effect of the incident. This article reports on one of the few studies of information sharing during such incidents. Interviews drawing on the critical incident technique were conducted with offshore emergency re...

The EU Control of Major Accidents Hazards Directive (Seveso II) requires an external emergency plan for each top tier site. This paper sets out a method to build the protection of public health into emergency planning for Seveso sites in the EU. The method involves the review of Seveso site details prescribed under the directive. The site safety report sets out the potential accident scenarios....

The relative accessibility to various chemical agents, including chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial compounds, places a toxicological mass casualty event, including chemical terrorism, among the major threats to homeland security. TMCE represents a medical and logistic challenge with potential hazardous exposure of first-response teams. In addition, TMCE poses substantial psychologica...

Preparing for man-made and natural emergencies requires both analysis of potential crisis situations and training those who are responsible for dealing with the crises; from first responders at the local level up to national leaders. Models and simulations can be used to analyze the adequacy of emergency management procedures and response plans, to give local, state and national leaders practic...

Emergency planners, first responders and relief workers increasingly rely on computational and communication systems that support all aspects of emergency management, from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery. Failure of these systems, whether accidental or because of malicious action, can have severe implications for emergency management. Accidental failures have been extensive...