Assignment structure

The Subject Outline provides guidelines for the structure of your assignments in this subject. I would highly recommend that you use the structures suggested as they align with the marking criteria contained within the sample marking sheets included with the Subject Outline. This Study Guide will address the content of the major assignment (Assignment 2). The description of the assignment sections introduces the assignment requirements that will be substantiated in these notes. My suggestion is that once you have finished studying this topic that you return and read the 'Brief description of assignment sections' below.

Brief description of assignment sections

Assignment 1 – Introduction to your event and Project Definition

Part A- Your selected event
This part provides you with the opportunity to identify and introduce your selected emergency/disaster event, and provide a clear, concise description of your selected event.

Part B- Project definition
This part enables you to define the project you will be undertaking within this subject. The project definition includes detailing the aim and objectives of your project, thus providing the purpose for your project. The scope sets the various parameters of your project and identifies and sets the limits of your pre-impact and impact phases. The context enables you to identify and explain any political, social or organisational implications relevant to your project and identify any stakeholders within your project. The authority enables you to identify the various community, organisational and/or academic authorities that you have obtained for your project, and finally, the relevant history enables you to explain the history of your selected event and any similar events that have previously occurred or might have had an influence on the management of the selected event.

Following on from the project definition you are also required to identify and discuss the various sources of information you will use to gather information on your selected event and its management.

Assignment 2 – Major Report

Introduction
This is particularly important as the aim and objectives will define the purpose of the assignment and the scope will set the parameters for the limits of the pre-impact and impact phases of your event. As in your project definition, the context enables you to identify and explain any political, social or organisational implications relevant to your project and identify any stakeholders within your project. The authority enables you to identify the various community, organisational and/or academic authorities that you have obtained for your project, and finally, the relevant history enables you to explain the history of your selected event and any similar events that have previously occurred or might have had an influence on the management of the selected event. In this case the Introduction contains a concise version of your project definition from Assignment 1, but enables you to revise your project definition and make changes in accordance with any alterations of your project’s direction following submission of Assignment 1.

Pre-impact phase

The pre-impact phase analysis is often the most difficult for students to:

a) find information about, and

b) maintain direction and focus in their analysis.

You should be constantly mindful that in the pre-impact phase, the event has yet to happen. We are therefore asking you to put yourself back in time, before the event occurred. By all means use your knowledge of what happened during the event to guide your search for information relevant to pre-impact phase strategies and arrangements that were in place or not in place. This “foresight” knowledge can be used to guide your analysis of the pre-impact phase, in your search for strengths and weaknesses in the preparedness of the community for the impact of a potential event. Use this foresight as such, to look for things that were amiss before the event occurred and that might cause problems for management of the event if it were to occur. Likewise, there may be positive aspects of emergency management practice in the pre-event phase that will enhance the management of an event if it were to occur.

Analysing the entire emergency management aspects of the pre-impact phase would be a mammoth task and therefore we have limited your analysis to specific areas of emergency management described below:

Legislation is relevant to this subject because quite often concerns are expressed about who is responsible for doing what and there is also potential for conflicting legislation. Therefore, an analysis of the legislation (you may find this information under such terms as law, policies, memorandum of understanding, agreements and practices etc.) relevant to your event and prior to the time it happened is important.

Communications is the single aspect of any emergency event that usually attracts the most criticism and often tends to override the positive aspects in the management of emergencies/disasters. Remember, communications is not just hardware, it includes the structures and personal practices and principles relating to inter and intra-agency communications, inter-personal communications, communications within and between communities and community groups, day to day information networks etc.

Time and geographical implications discusses the timing and remoteness of an emergency/disaster from the resources that may be required to combat that event. Might the geographical location of a community have an impact on the occurrence of a selected emergency event? Might the time of day or time of year have an impact on the likely effects such an event may have on the community? These factors will have a strong influence on the effective and efficient management of that event if it should occur.

Preventative or mitigating actions looks at the specification of preventative or mitigating actions that were or were not taken prior to the event occurring, i.e. during the pre-impact phase of the event, and will be very useful in the following section on Implementation of Plans.

Implementation of plans reviews the level of preparedness of the community affected by your selected event prior to that event occurring. You will therefore need to ascertain whether or not there were any plans in place before the event occurred, what strategies did those plans contain, did they contain any specific strategies related to managing the event you have selected to analyse and that you know eventually happens, when were they developed, who was responsible for their implementation, and were they regularly reviewed and exercised.

Impact phase

The impact phase or response phase of your selected event will likely have far more information available than the pre-impact phase. You will also likely find this information is more readily accessible because in recent years the emergency management community has become more pro-active in recording and documenting the response measures taken during major emergency/disaster events. The increasing use of major boards and courts of inquiry following major events also provides researchers with additional sources of information relevant to the management of these events.

As with the pre-impact phase, analysing the entire emergency management aspects of the impact phase of your selected event would be a mammoth task and therefore we have also limited your analysis to the specific areas of emergency management described below:

Roles and responsibilities examines the roles and responsibilities of agencies and organisations during the impact phase of the event and compares the actual roles and responsibilities undertaken against any pre-determined roles and responsibilities, and analyses whether they were effective and where improvement could be made.

Command and control examines the command and control arrangements and structures that were utilised during the impact phase of the event and whether such arrangements and structures were pre-determined, effective and any improvements that could be made.

Emergency operations centres examines the establishment and management of emergency operations centres during the impact phase of the event. Again, this section enables you to analyse what happened on the day against any pre-determined strategies and from that analysis identify improvements that can be made.

Media management examines the management of the media during the impact phase of the event and identifies how the media was utilised, whether management was related to any pre-determined media management strategies and also identifies any improvements that can be made.

Evacuation examines the use and implementation of evacuation strategies during the event, the management of evacuations and whether any such activities were related to any pre-determined evacuation strategies. This section also allows you to identify any improvements that can be made.

External operational aid examines the use and management of external operational aid during the impact phase of the event. It enables you to analyse the effectiveness of the strategies used to manage external operational aid and identify improvement that can be made.

Conclusions and recommendations brings your analysis to a close. In order to become better emergency managers we need to learn from history; therefore the conclusions and recommendations provided by you are vital. This section should not only address the negative aspects encountered during the management of the event but also recognise the positive aspects and the recommendations provided by you may assist similar events in the future to be more effectively managed.

The use of maps and diagrams is encouraged, however they should only be appended where they will be an advantage to the reader. Again, if these maps and diagrams are obtained from elsewhere, the sources must be cited in-text and the full reference included in your reference list/bibliography.

As with the use of maps and diagrams, appendices may be included if they are relevant, and if they will be of advantage to the reader.

Continuity

The selection of your event will have a bearing on your studies in the coming year, in that you will be required to further analyse the impact and post-impact phase of your selected emergency/disaster event in the next subject EMG208, Post Impact Disaster Management.

To assist you in your selection of an assignment topic I will provide you with some guidance in the latter part of this topic as to the types of events you may need to consider. With the time constraints imposed on you to complete your assignments it is important that you invest quality time and effort in your event selection to ensure that it has sufficient detail to meet the assessment criteria of your assignments.

 Event selection criteria

Ideally, the event you choose to study should provide sufficient detail to enable you to complete your event analysis and associated assignments for this subject EMG206 as well as providing sufficient information for continued study in the following subject EMG208. You may change the studied event during the year but this will probably cause you difficulty and lessen your chances of success due to not only the time constraints imposed on you to complete the assignments, but the research required to fulfil you assignment requirements.

The areas of emergency management related to your selected emergency or disaster event that will need to be analysed by you in the two Emergency Operations Management subjects are: