Emergency Response Operations

  • Acosta JD, Nelson C, Beckjord EB, et al. (2009). A National Agenda for Public Health Systems Research on Emergency Preparedness. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
    • Improving public health emergency preparedness is at the top of the national agenda, but the lack of frequent opportunities to observe and learn from real-world responses to large-scale public health emergencies has hindered the development of an adequate evidence base. As a result, efforts to develop performance measures and standards, best practices, program guidance, training, and other tools have proceeded without a strong empirical and analytical basis. This report describes a public health systems research agenda for emergency preparedness that identifies short- and long-term research priorities.
  • Balajee SA, Pasi OG, Etoundi AGM, et al. (2017). Sustainable Model for Public Health Emergency Operations Centers for Global Settings. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 23(S1), S190-95.
    • Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs) are increasingly viewed as necessary components of emergency preparedness. Public health EOCs (PHEOCs) are physical spaces with the ability to monitor events using various sources of data, improve communication between public health and emergency management personnel, facilitate coordination with multiple response partners, and provide space for members of the incident command team to gather and work. This article uses 2 case studies to illustrate how PHEOCs can operate continuously by maintaining routine surveillance activities and serving public health needs during outbreak and nonoutbreak periods, thereby ensuring sustainability and helping address other national needs, such as routine analyses and use of surveillance data.

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  • Barbera JA, Yeatts DJ, Macintyre AG. (2009). Challenge of hospital emergency preparedness: analysis and recommendations. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 3(S1), S74-S82.
    • This article explores potential reasons for inconsistent emergency preparedness across the hospital industry. It identifies and discusses potential motivational factors that encourage effective emergency management and the obstacles that may impede it. Strategies are proposed to promote consistent, reproducible, and objectively measured preparedness across the US health care industry. The article also identifies issues requiring additional research.
  • Burkle FM Jr, Hsu EB, Loehr M, et al. (2007). Definition and functions of health unified command and emergency operations centers for large-scale bioevent disasters within the existing ICS. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 1(2), 135-141.
    • The incident command system provides an organizational structure at the agency, discipline, or jurisdiction level for effectively coordinating response and recovery efforts during most conventional disasters. This structure does not have the capacity or capability to manage the complexities of a large-scale health-related disaster, especially a pandemic, in which unprecedented decisions at every level (eg, surveillance, triage protocols, surge capacity, isolation, quarantine, health care staffing, deployment) are necessary to investigate, control, and prevent transmission of disease. Emerging concepts supporting unified decision-making, coordination, and resource management system through a health-specific emergency operations center are addressed and the potential structure, function, roles, and responsibilities are described, including comparisons across countries with similar incident command systems. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2007;1:135–141)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). CDC public health preparedness capabilities: national standards for state and local planning. Atlanta: CDC.
    • One of the nation’s key preparedness challenges has been determining appropriate state and local public health preparedness priorities. This guide was developed to assist state and local public health departments in their strategic planning and covers 15 capabilities to serve as national public health preparedness standards.
  • Chang Z, Li S. (2007). Collaboration enabled GIS tools for emergency operation centre. Geomatics Solutions for Disaster Management. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg.
    • Geographical information systems (GIS) have been widely used in emergency operation centres (EOC) for modeling, spatial decision-making and map distribution. However, the collapse of EOC itself, for example the destroyed EOC in the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001 and the Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana had inevitably delayed the emergency response. Although virtual EOC (VEOC) provides partial solutions to this problem, most of the VEOC software products are limited in providing real-time collaboration and coordination using GIS tools. This paper presents the results of a research project, aiming at providing such collaborative GIS software tools over the Internet for the VEOC.
  • Chen R, Sharman R, Rao HR, et al. (2008). Coordination in emergency response management. Communications of the ACM, 51(5), 66-73.  
    • This article proposes a framework to analyze emergency response coordination patterns, based primarily on semi-structured interviews with 32 emergency response personnel, including town, city, county, and state emergency managers and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) coordinators. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated by applying it to an actual incident..
  • Gibson PJ, Theadore F, Jellison JB. (2012). The common ground preparedness framework: a comprehensive description of public health emergency preparedness. American Journal of Public Health, 102(4), 633-642.     
    • Currently, public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) is not well defined. Discussions about public health preparedness often make little progress, for lack of a shared understanding of the topic. We present a concise yet comprehensive framework describing PHEP activities. The framework, which was refined for 3 years by state and local health departments, uses terms easily recognized by the public health workforce within an information flow consistent with the National Incident Management System. To assess the framework’s completeness, strengths, and weaknesses, these authors compare it to 4 other frameworks: the RAND Corporation’s PREPARE Pandemic Influenza Quality Improvement Toolkit, the National Response Framework’s Public Health and Medical Services Functional Areas, the National Health Security Strategy Capabilities List, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s PHEP Capabilities.
  • Hecker EJ, Bruzewicz AJ. (2008). Emergency management international: improving national and international disaster preparedness and response. International Journal of Emergency Management, 5(3-4), 250-60.       
    • This paper examines the necessary conditions for effective disaster planning, preparedness and response for large disasters requiring national and international coordination and cooperation and examples of techniques used and outcomes of CMEP activities. It ultimately concludes with a discussion of a proposed approach to addressing all hazards responses for oil-related disasters in Africa.
  • Henstra D. (2010). Evaluating local government emergency management programs: What framework should public managers adopt?. Public Administration Review, 70(2), 236-46.        
    • Local governments play a key role in emergency management by developing the necessary policies and concrete procedures for responding effectively to community emergencies and their aftermath. However, because emergency measures in most jurisdictions are rarely, if ever, activated, public managers find it difficult to evaluate and assess the quality of existing emergency management programs. Drawing on expert literature to identify 30 elements of a high‐quality local emergency management program, key elements are refined and synthesized into a single framework that provides clear‐cut best practices for emergency program evaluation and performance measurement.  
  • Kapucu N. (2012). Disaster and emergency management systems in urban areas. Cities, 29, S41-S49.  
    • This article focuses on the factors shaping and constituting governance in urban/metropolitan emergency management. The main focus of the article is the multi-faceted inter-organizational relationships producing shared goals that are practiced at the local level, and specifically within the context of county-level metropolitan emergency management. The article presents a conceptual understanding of the governance concept, a brief summary of related research in the context of emergency management, and an example of the Orlando Metropolitan Area in the State of Florida for practical purposes.
  • Kapucu N, Arslan T, Demiroz F. (2010). Collaborative emergency management and national emergency management network. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, 19(4), 452-468.   
    • The purpose of this paper is to analyze scholarly discussions and findings regarding collaborative emergency management (CEM). Several aspects such as leadership, decision making, intergovernmental and interorganizational relations, technology applications in CEM have been investigated.
  • Moore S, Mawji A, Shiell A, et al. (2007). Public health preparedness: a systems-level approach. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 61(4), 282-286.  
    • Public health and emergency preparedness have become central concepts in the current restructuring of various regional-, national- and global-level public health and emergency management agencies and systems. In this article, a glossary of the most important terms and concepts currently pertaining to public health preparedness is provided with a focus on systems-level and organizational issues.
  • Moynihan DP. (2009). The Network Governance of Crisis Response: Case Studies of Incident Command Systems. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 19(4), 895-915.
    • This article examines the application of a structural innovation known as Incident Command Systems (ICS) in different crises. The ICS seeks to coordinate multiple response organizations under a temporary hierarchical structure. The ICS is of practical interest because it has become the dominant mechanism by which crisis response is organized in the United States. It is of theoretical interest because it provides insights into how a highly centralized mode of network governance operates. Despite the hierarchical characteristics of the ICS, the network properties of crisis response fundamentally affects its operations, in terms of the coordination difficulties that multiple members bring, the ways in which authority is shared and contested between members, and the importance of trust in supplementing formal modes of control.

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  • Perry RW. (1995). The structure and function of community emergency operations centres. Disaster Prevention and Management, 4(5), 37-41.
    • Addresses the issue of the structure and function of the community emergency operations centre (EOC). There is some confusion among some emergency responders and particularly among public officials regarding the role and function of the EOC. In part this emerges because many EOCs at different levels operate in conjunction with any given disaster. This article seeks to achieve an explicit definition of the range and content of disaster responsibilities associated with the community EOC and thereby to clarify and contribute more to effective community‐wide disaster response.
  • Waugh WL, Streib G. (2006). Collaboration and leadership for effective emergency management. Public Administration Review, 66(s1), 131-40.    
    • Collaboration is a necessary foundation for dealing with both natural and technological hazards and disasters and the consequences of terrorism. This analysis describes the structure of the American emergency management system, charts the development of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and identifies conflicts arising from the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the attempt to impose a command and control system on a very collaborative organizational culture in a very collaborative sociopolitical and legal context.
  • World Health Organization. (2014). Standard Operating Procedures for Coordinating Public Health Event Preparedness and Response in the WHO African Region. Geneva: WHO.

    • The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Coordinating Public Health Event Preparedness and Response in the WHO African Region seek to inform and assist WHO staff at the frontline of public health action. The primary purpose of the SOPs is to describe the steps that staff should normally follow in support of countries in the region with regard to the prevention, detection and response to acute public health events.

  • World Health Organization. (2017). Emergency response framework (ERF). Geneva: WHO. 
    • The purpose of this Emergency Response Framework (ERF) is to clarify the World Health Organization’s roles and responsibilities in  regard to emergency response and to provide a common approach for its work in emergencies. Ultimately, the ERF requires WHO to act with urgency and predictability to best serve and be accountable to populations affected by emergencies.
  • Xu M, Li SX. (2015). Analysis of good practice of public health Emergency Operations Centers. Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine, 8(8), 677-82.
    • This literature review was conducted to explore the EOCs of the United States, the selected countries in the European Union, the UK, and Australia, and summarize the good practice for the improvement of National Health Emergency Response Command Center in China.