Crisis-ready Leadership

1 Emerging Threats and Hazards

Learning Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Identify various types of incidents.
• Understand the resources available for responding to threats and hazards.
• Identify different levels of government responses to incidents.
• Identify key decisions made in response to various incidents.
• Describe elements that would make a community more resilient.

1.1 Incident Management Systems

The scope and scale of an incident demands a scalable systems-approach to resolving, managing, and recovering from the incident. This is often referred to as an Incident Management System. In the US, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has defined the components of the National Incident Management System as the following: National Qualification System, Resource Typing, Inventorying, Mutual Aid, Incident Command System, and Emergency Operations Centers. This standard approach ensures communities at the local, state, and federal levels of government can interact, communicate, share resources, rely on personnel and equipment from other jurisdictions as they coordinate resources to save lives, stabilize the incident, and protect property and the environment. Regardless of the system used, public and private sector organizations need to be able to recognize and respond appropriately when an incident occurs. The type, scale, and complexity of an incident will determine the type and number of responders.

1.2 Threats, Hazards, and Incidents