Like all professions, emergency management has evolved throughout the years to become what it is today — a defined field of work that’s paving a career path for future employees. The modern concept of emergency management has grown from the civil defense days — when in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a federal office to protect civilians and respond to community needs in wartime. As state and local governments saw the need for programs focusing on emergency management, veterans and retired first responders were the go-to candidates to fill these positions. (more…)
How Emergency Management Is Changing (For the Better)
Homeland security funding put to practical use in region
Ten years after 9/11, the federal government has doled out more than $32 billion to states for anti-terrorism grants.
Local officials say that planning and training for disasters has helped communication and decision-making even in common emergency situations.
Indiana has received $256 million in federal grants since 2002, with about $5.4 million directed toward District 1, which includes Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper and Newton counties.
The Future of Grants in Domestic Preparednes (PDF)
The purpose of this briefing is to discuss gaps that were uncovered in a recent DomPrepsurvey. This survey was created and taken by a panel of experts (DomPrep40 Advisors).Readers of the DomPrep Journal were then asked to take the same survey, the results ofwhich were compared to uncover gaps that need to be addressed.
Twitter Hashtags and Emergency Management (Updated)
<This article was updated 11/20/11 due to current trends in homeland security hashtags; see below>
While some emergency managers are embracing social media with both arms, others are still avoiding it. However, social media has emerged as an important tool for emergency managers. Emergency managers are using social media as a preparedness tool to engage the community, help with public information and as otherwise aid in dissemination of the preparedness message. In addition, social media is emerging as an important tool for situation awareness during the response and recovery phases of an emergency.
It is important, in using social media for all phases of emergency management, to understand that it is not just about Twitter. However, Twitter has clearly emerged as the most significant platform for emergency management engagement and situational awareness. Twitter is simple; it is a micro blogging tool which is limited to 140 characters. Anyone can follow what anyone else has to say. This stream of data (the Twittersphere or Twitter Stream) can be overwhelming based on the huge volume of silly Tweets that populate the stream. However, the use of a “hashtag” (a short term preceded by the hash or # symbol) makes it manageable. In addition, there are many Twitter aggregators and trend monitoring websites available; these use a variety of tactics to filter out what’s important or of interest to emergency managers. Currently some better software tools are emerging which may help automate the monitoring process. (more…)
