Emergency Management, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7 DEVELOPING STRATEGY

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

—Sun Tzu

As was noted in the previous chapter, risk assessment is the basis of the emergency management program. Upon completion of a risk assessment, planners should have a fairly complete picture of community vulnerability to potential hazards. Risk assessment also helps to put hazards in perspective, allowing for policy decisions that prioritize the use of scarce resources and focus planning on those events that represent the greatest risk to the community.

Basing emergency management policy on risk would seem to be common sense, but the record of government has not been particularly good in this area. Funding for emergency management through the Emergency Management Preparedness Grant has always used a fixed base amount for each state plus a small amount based on population. When funds are looked at on a per capita basis, there is a great inequity in the distribution of funds, with those states with the greatest risk actually receiving less per capita than smaller states. Furthermore, there is no basis for believing that population alone is a reasonable indicator of potential risk.

When one considers the much‐trumpeted war on terrorism, one is forced to conclude that this policy is also not based on an accurate assessment of risk. If one looks at terrorism from an actuarial perspective, the mortality rate from terrorism in ...