Management

The Future of Emergency Management

It seems the future of emergency management is wide open and growing. The text illustrates how the field has changed in just the last few years, especially since the threat of terrorism seems to loom larger every day. In five to ten years, I think professional emergency management will spread further around the world, as past experiences such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural and man-made disasters keep showing the need for coordinated efforts between countries around the world.

It seems that training and education are going to increase as well. Governments are going to have to make more funds available for training and education to ensure the safety of all citizens the readiness of all emergency management personnel, from military to police, fire, and voluntary organizations. Training needs to be coordinated and correlated so it applies to all responders. Perhaps one way emergency management can become more effective and global at the same time is for neighboring countries to band together and train emergency management teams together. This would save training costs, as more people could be trained at once, and it could coordinate the responders from neighboring areas who might respond to a major disaster to a country nearby. This is one way to ensure everyone can work together with the same goals and information. Neighboring states could us the same criteria for training, thereby cutting training costs and ensuring cooperation and understanding from neighboring responders in the U.S. As well.

It is clear the field of emergency management is not what it was even ten years ago. Today, there are more considerations about terrorism, global warfare, and WMD that were not as prevalent even ten years ago. Emergency management has to evolve as disaster and the threat of disaster evolves. With all the talk of global warming, there may be ramifications from that problem that may become much more apparent in the future, and emergency management may have to deal with those too, such as mass evacuations, massive climate change, and other problems.

References

Farazmand, a. (2001). Handbook of crisis and emergency management. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.