Academic literature on the topic 'Connecticut. Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security'

AbstractThe terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 led to the largest US Government transformation since the formation of the Department of Defense following World War II. More than 22 different agencies, in whole or in part, and >170,000 employees were reorganized to form a new Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with the primary mission to protect the American homeland. Legislation enacted in November 2002 transferred the entire Federal Emergency Management Agency and several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) assets to DHS, including the Office of Emergency Response, and oversight for the National Disaster Medical System, Strategic National Stockpile, and Metropolitan Medical Response System. This created a potential separation of “health” and “medical” assets between the DHS and HHS. A subsequent presidential directive mandated the development of a National Incident Management System and an all-hazard National Response Plan.While no Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) assets were targeted for transfer, the VA remains the largest integrated healthcare system in the nation with important support roles in homeland security that complement its primary mission to provide care to veterans. The Emergency Management Strategic Healthcare Group (EMSHG) within the VA's medical component, the Veteran Health Administration (VHA), is the executive agent for the VA's Fourth Mission, emergency management. In addition to providing comprehensive emergency management services to the VA, the EMSHG coordinates medical back-up to the Department of Defense, and assists the public via the National Disaster Medical System and the National Response Plan.This article describes the VA's role in homeland security and disasters, and provides an overview of the ongoing organizational and operational changes introduced by the formation of the new DHS. Challenges and opportunities for public health are highlighted.

The discipline of emergency management (EM) is at a critical crossroads. Emergency managers around the world are faced with new threats, new responsibilities, and new opportunities. This paper examines the organizational changes made by the US federal government in shaping the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and presents three key lessons learned during the past decade that could guide emergency planners as they design and manage EM organizations of the future.

As the Department of Homeland Security begins its 2018 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, it will certainly address the question “what is homeland security?”. This article is meant to provide a concise overview. It begins with a definition and relates it back to the origins of homeland security. It then takes that same definition and projects it onto the DHS mission sets. It then takes a closer look at DHS missions in border and transportation security, counterterrorism, emergency management, countering weapons of mass destruction, critical infrastructure protection, and cybersecurity. It concludes with a unique argument that homeland security may be only a transient concern, and that technological change may offer a brighter future.

This article examines local emergency manager's beliefs regarding control over tasks during various stages of the hazard cycle since federal policies went into effect following the September 11 attacks. The study considers whether a disparity exists between the actions of local officials during each phase of the “hazard cycle” and the policy expectations of the federal government, which call for greater federal control over activities in emergency management and homeland security. To do so, hypothesis testing investigates the jurisdiction's use of comprehensive emergency management (CEM) practices, the perceived “clarity” of the federal policy demands, and if the local actors feel coerced to comply with federal policy demands so that grant funding is not compromised. Using a model developed from “third-generation” policy implementation research, the results show that the odds of local officials citing federal control over these actions have very limited statistical significance. This signals that the perceived lack of local input into the development of these federal policies and the policies’ limited use of traditional CEM measures may not be in concert with what local actors perform in the field. Simply put, the respondents claim to understand the federal policy demands, support the concept of federal control as the policies describe, yet follow their own plans or traditional CEM principles, even if such actions do not support the federal policy demands. These results align with pre-existing research in the emergency management field that show issues with efforts to centralize policies under the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This research explored federal intervention with the particular emphasis on examining how a collaborative relationship between Department of Defense (DOD) and Homeland Security (DHS) led to greater effectiveness between these two federal departments and their subordinates (United States Northern Command and Federal Emergency Management Agency, respectively) during the preparation and response phases of the disaster cycle regarding US continental-based hurricanes. Through the application of a two-phased, sequential mixed methods approach, this study determined how their relationship has led to longitudinal improvements in the years following Hurricane Katrina, focusing on hurricanes as the primary unit of analysis.

The US Department of Homeland Security identified college sport venues as terrorist targets due to the potential for mass casualties and catastrophic social and economic impact. Therefore, it is critical for college sport safety and security personnel to implement effective risk management practices. However, deficiencies have been identified in the level of preparedness of college sport event security personnel related to risk management training and effective emergency response capabilities. To address the industry need, the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security designed, developed, and evaluated a national sport event risk management training program for National Collegiate Athletic Association command groups. The purpose of this article was to provide an overview of the design, development, and evaluation process.

ABSTRACTThere is no widely accepted, validated framework of health care emergency management capabilities (HEMCs) that can be used by facilities to guide their disaster preparedness and response efforts. We reviewed the HEMCs and the evaluation methods used by the Veterans Health Administration, The Joint Commission, the Institute of Medicine Metropolitan Medical Response System committee, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services to determine whether a core set of HEMCs and evaluative methods could be identified.Despite differences in the conceptualization of health care emergency management, there is considerable overlap among the agencies regarding major capabilities and capability-specific elements. Of the 5 agencies, 4 identified occupant safety and continuity of operations as major capabilities. An additional 5 capabilities were identified as major by 3 agencies. Most often the differences were related to whether a capability should be a major one versus a capability-specific element (eg, decontamination, management of resources). All of the agencies rely on multiple indicators and data sources to evaluate HEMCs. Few performance-based tools have been developed and none have been fully tested for their reliability and validity. Consensus on a framework and tools to measure HEMCs is needed. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2009;3(Suppl 1):S45–S51)

Inherent limitations of controlling risks in complex socio-technical systems were revealed in several major catastrophic disasters such as nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, well blowout in Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in 2010, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While desired risk management leans toward the prevention of such unwanted events, the mitigation of their impact becomes more important and emergency response operations provide the last line of protection against disasters (Kanno, Makita, & Furuta, 2008). In response to September 11 terrorist attack at World Trade Center in New York, U.S. Government launched the National Incident Management System (NIMS), an integrated national and multi-jurisdictional emergency preparedness and response program (Department of Homeland Security, 2008). The NIMS framework is characterized by a common operating picture, interoperability, reliability, scalability and portability, and resilience and redundancy (Department of Homeland Security, 2008). Among these characteristics, effective emergency response operations require resilience because planned-for actions may not be implementable and therefore the emergency response organizations must adapt to and cope with uncertain and changing environment (Mendonca, Beroggi, & Wallace, 2003). There have been many attempts to define resilience in various disciplines (Hollnagel, Woods, & Leveson, 2007). Nevertheless, such attempts for emergency management systems (EMS) is still scarce in the existing body of resilience literature. By considering traits of EMS, this study proposes the definition of resilience as ‘ a system’s capability to respond to different kinds of disrupting events and to bring the system back to a desired state in a timely manner with efficient use of resources, and with minimum loss of performance capacity.’ In order to model resilience in EMS, the U.S. NIMS is chosen because it allows for investigation of resilient behavior among different components that inevitably involve both human agents and technological artifacts as joint cognitive systems (JCSs) (Hollnagel & Woods, 2005). In the NIMS, the largest JCS comprises five critical functions: Command, Planning, Operations, Logistics and Finance & Administration (F&A) (Department of Homeland Security, 2008). External stimuli or inputs to this JCS are events that occur outside of its boundary such as uncontrolled events. When these events do occur, they are typically perceived by the ‘boots-on-the-ground’ in the Operations function. The perceived data are reported and transported to the Planning function in which such data are transformed into useful and meaningful information. This information provides knowledge base for generating a set of decisions. Subsequently, Command function selects some of those decisions and authorizes them with adequate resources so that Operations actually take actions for such decisions to the uncontrolled events. This compensation process continues until the JCS achieves its systematic goal which is to put the event under control. On the other hand, Logistics feeds required and requested resources such as workforce, equipment and material for the system operations and F&A does the accounting of resources as those resources are actually used to execute its given missions. Such JCS utilizes two types of memory: a collective working memory (CWM) can be manifested in the form of shared displays, document or whiteboards used by teams; similarly, collective long-term memory (CLTM) can take forms of past accident reports, procedures and guidelines. Based on this conceptual framework for resilience of emergency operations, five Resilient Performance Factors (RPFs) are suggested to make resilience operational in EMS. Such RPFs are adaptive response, rapidity of recovery, resource utilization, performance stability and team situation awareness. Adaptation is one of the most obvious patterns of resilient performance (Leveson et al., 2006; Rankin, Lundberg, Woltjer, Rollenhagen, & Hollnagel, 2014). Another factor that typifies resilience of any socio- technical system is how quickly or slowly it bounces back from perturbations (Hosseini, Barker, & Ramirez-Marquez, 2016). In most systems, resources are constrained. Hence, resilience requires the effective and efficient use of resources to varying demands. As such demands persist over time, the system’s performance level tends to diminish. For the EMS to remain resilient, its performance should be maintained in a stable fashion. Finally, EMS is is expected to possess the ability to perceive what is currently taking place, to comprehend what such occurrence actually means, and to anticipate what may happen and decide what to do about it. When this occurs within a team, it is often referred to as team situation awareness (Endsley, 1995; McManus, Seville, Brunsden, & Vargo, 2007). This resilience model for EMS needs validation and many assumptions and simplifications made in this work require further justification. This model will be discussed and validated by using subsequent data collection from Emergency Operations Training Center operated by Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) and will be reported in future publications.

Following its 1992 reorganization, the once scandal-ridden and sclerotic Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) experienced a dramatic turnaround. The agency morphed from a caricature of the ills of bureaucracy into a model of effective federal administration. Politicians who previously blamed the agency for its slow and inefficient response to disasters came to depend on the agency to lend credibility to their own efforts. After the agency’s reorganization, politicians at all levels of government purposefully appeared beside FEMA workers. As recently as 2002, FEMA’s reputation was so strong that the designers of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) included FEMA in it to lend prestige to the nascent department. Unlike other agencies so included, FEMA was allowed to keep its name, confirming the cachet of its brand.

AbstractAs the state of the nation's ability to respond to a radiological event is examined, it has become apparent that both capacity and capability are lacking. Department of Homeland Security National Planning Scenario #11 is designed to address the planning activities for the response to an attack using radiological dispersal devices. The scenario details show that the cleanup activity will take several years, and that there will be between 360000 and 1000000 environmental samples in the first year. Based on existing capacity and capabilities it would take four to six years to analyze the samples generated at the lower end of the sample range.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been given responsibility for the remediation activities following a radiological event, and has awarded cooperative agreements to several laboratories to start the process of developing capacity and capabilities. The Connecticut Department of Public Health Laboratory (DPHL) was awarded one of the cooperative agreements. The DPHL has started activities to further those goals by investigating and implementing procedures to ensure that samples with activity higher than normal background can be processed safely, as well as implementing more rapid methods for radiochemical analysis. The DPHL already served as the primacy radiochemistry laboratory for several New England states and thus had a solid foundation to build upon. The DPHL has taken a process flow approach in preparing for radiological emergency response and recommends that radioanalytical laboratories that are reviewing their roles in such a response: • Ensure that their Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses allow for appropriate radioisotope types and activities;• Develop procedures and processes to ensure that samples with higher activities can be processed safely, with due regard for sample screening and aliquanting samples;• Provide for enhanced radioanalytical contamination control, with careful consideration of sample flow and breaking the laboratory into zones with controlled access;• Address personnel safety by enhancing training, adding real time dosimetry to exposure monitoring protocols, and reviewing personal protective equipment and hygiene protocols with staff;• Develop plans for spills and decontamination, as well as for increased monitoring of laboratory areas;• Plan for secure sample storage;• Exercise the plan.

This chapter provides readers with an overview of how social media has enhanced large-scale natural disaster response at the Department of Homeland Security and its partners. The authors of this chapter present the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and how its successes and failures have shaped how the Department of Homeland Security has managed trends in increased community participation and information technology. Concepts from Systems Engineering frame the discussion around resilience engineering, network analysis, information systems, and human systems integration as they pertain to how social media can be integrated more effectively in large-scale disaster response. Examples of social media in disaster response are presented including a more in-depth case study on the use of social media during the 2012 Hurricane Sandy response. The chapter concludes with a proposed framework of a decision support system which integrates the benefits of social media while mitigating its risks.

This chapter provides readers with an overview of how social media has enhanced large-scale natural disaster response at the Department of Homeland Security and its partners. The authors of this chapter present the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and how its successes and failures have shaped how the Department of Homeland Security has managed trends in increased community participation and information technology. Concepts from Systems Engineering frame the discussion around resilience engineering, network analysis, information systems, and human systems integration as they pertain to how social media can be integrated more effectively in large-scale disaster response. Examples of social media in disaster response are presented including a more in-depth case study on the use of social media during the 2012 Hurricane Sandy response. The chapter concludes with a proposed framework of a decision support system which integrates the benefits of social media while mitigating its risks.

Clark County, Nevada has been criticized by US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) for its un-attainment air quality problem for particulate matters (PM 10 and PM 2.5) and ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO). The Department of Air Quality Management (DAQM), Clark County, the regulatory and enforcement agency, is required by the US EPA to measure and report to the public the impact of aeroallergens as well as visibility and haze issues. From the long-term observation, air quality in the Las Vegas Valley is also influenced by those pollution from the neighboring states, currently around 30 monitoring stations through out the county have been in service for years to continuously monitor meteorological condition and provide valuable air quality information to the public in a timely fashion. Since the existing monitoring system was not designed to collect and process large amount of data set at a short time period, the agency cannot flexibly acquire higher resolution data sets as well as any non-scheduled data collection. Meanwhile, the much-needed data presentation and reporting features were not considered for the past. To ensure that Clark County will reach and maintain attainment of all federal air quality standards, the Nevada Center for Advanced Computational Methods (NCACM) at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is required by the DAQM to design a new system that can provide a multi-function data acquisition and management system. By characterized the deficiencies in the existing system, the NCACM redesign the current system that will provide a web-based work environment with new communication, model simulation and database management modules. More remote control capabilities are also included in the new system. The application will be more scalable, flexible and maintainable. The system is defined into four distinct tiers, data acquisition, data repository, data analysis and forecasting and data presentation tiers. After the 9–11 terrorist attacks, emergency response for any major cities around the country becomes a vital issue for homeland security. Through the timely data acquisition support, the system can return high-resolution data from monitoring stations for efficient model simulation. While continuously meteorological data feeding through the network, the NCACM’s newly configured Beowulf PC-clustering system calculates the possible transportation scenario around the valley and returns the best emergency scenario analysis.