What is the Role of Emergency Management?

Risk, Resilience and Preparedness Podcast - Inside My Canoehead

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There are a few sources to lead us to a conclusion, the first being our legislation. As this is local to national, and to some degree multilateral and multinational, we codify our intent in laws that are geographically bounded. The state EM legislation governs the roles and responsibilities of the field in that state, with no influence or authority over the neighbouring states. In practice, the majority of regional statues in states are similar, with generally common overarching ideas. The specifics, found in the regulatory framework and administrative procedures vary, as do the authorities, often reflective of the local culture and ideology.

The second is in the communications, the public sector resident-facing official messaging, which assigns responsibilities to the population and ideally outlines the intended actions of the public sector. These have a high degree of commonality, remaining vague, generalist and unchanged in decades. The preparedness messages occur with a regular frequency, advising the population on hazards and providing advice, the effort is concentrated in persuading the residents to adopt behavoirs the public sector believe will be helpful in times of crisis. Further, there crisis communications, the alerts, immediately preceding an event or in-event messages are all local, ideally culturally appropriate and timely.

The third is the population’s belief. It is the expectations harboured by the residents, what they believe should happen leading up to, during and after an event. This is the collection of ideas related to direct and indirect support as well as delivery of services directly to the population. The notable portion of this is the face to face, the belief that the public sector will be there, to varying degrees, in person, in the time of need. These beliefs are influenced by culture, sense of place, responsibility and confidence or trust in public sector institutions. This varies across regions and nations.
Research links institutional trust to meeting expectations of the served public. That requires both parties to agree to a reasonable standard of care in policy, communicate expectations in regular messaging and then deliver upon what was agreed. Negotiation and discourse are something that used to be standard, but is often overseen by those who believe they are omnipotent in their role to protect.

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