|by Ed Wolff, MS, CEM, MEP|
A quick review of after-action reports for almost any major disaster event will typically reveal communications as the area where improvement is needed the most. Communications is the backbone for any incident or event where an Incident Commander, Emergency Manager, Police Chief, or Fire Chief needs to manage assets in the field.
How can emergency management interactions be improved to enhance a culture of preparedness? Consider the following best practices to bolster your agency’s communications capabilities:
Make it scalable.
As disasters expand in scope and severity, the need for effective coordination and communications grows. Create comprehensive, but flexible communications plans and acquire sufficient equipment to allow for evolving situations.
Make it multimodal.
During a disaster event, common channels for communication may be sporadically or completely unavailable. To deal with this problem, emergency communications should be “multimodal,” which simply means utilizing more than one method or channel to communicate. Key options for departmental multimodal communications include SMS/text messaging, voice, email, video teleconferencing, secure chat applications and radio communications.
In an emergency management environment, these various communication modes are often managed through an emergency/mass notification system. This type of system centralizes all contacts and messaging channels to ensure everyone gets the right message at the right time.
Whatever the tool or process, mitigate the risk of losing communications by establishing multiple, diverse channels.
Make it track and confirm.
It’s frustrating for a manager to hear “I didn’t get the message” from a key recipient. It’s also maddening to try and confirm recipients’ understanding of a situation from a message sent through a “mass” channel such as SMS or email.
To address this, deploy validating technologies, like those found in a planning or emergen