What the Emergency Management Experts Are Trying to Tell You

Staying on top of industry news isn’t easy. There are hundreds of reports and insights released every day across the web, and we don’t all have a personal Watson to help us process information. To help you get to what really matters, we pulled out the top three insights from IBM Emergency Management experts.

“Be consistent in your approach.”

Stephen Russo is Director of Public Safety, Law Enforcement, and Emergency Management Solutions at IBM. In his blog on improved crisis preparedness , he calls out the need to approach both “day-to-day community incidents” like unplanned power outages and planned festivals with the same set of tools and techniques you would use for a crisis situation, like a natural disaster. In his experience helping government and public safety organizations implement emergency management technology, he has found that maintaining a consistent methodology allows first responders and staff to “engage immediately and naturally in response” because of their familiarity with the tools involved. He advises that the best emergency management approaches integrate modern analytics, social and mobile technology to further enable the fastest possible response –for events big and small.
 

“Your four phase plan needs an update.”

Emergency management plans often hinge on the four phases of the emergency management cycle – preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. With the new capabilities of advanced data & analytics solutions, though, these phases get an upgrade. This blog post outlines all of the new, streamlined improvements each phase of the cycle gets with the help of an effective tech solution. During preparedness, predictive analytics can make “what-if” scenario planning possible. For response, necessary data can be integrated and made available to key officials even when infrastructure is down. Communications processes can be automated. During recovery, analytics can help ensure resources are deployed where they are most effective, as well as track the success of recovery plans over the course of years. Value is brought to each part of the cycle, but in the end, “the real effects of these new [technology] solutions are felt when they operate cohesively across all four phases”.

“Don’t let your data live in silos.”

Did you also get riled by the poor emergency management planning Jurassic World? (Why did they need a T-Rex sized door?) So does Jen Q. Public in this blog post where she advises on a smarter approach to emergency management. Her top recommendation? She advises “pulling data from disparate sources into a common view [to provide] critical information” at the point of necessity. An integrated view of data allows patterns to be detected that could warn of disasters in advance, and also allows departments to work together faster and more effectively when responding.

Want more tips from the experts? Check out the IBM Big Data Hub.