IEM Blog
A Conversation with Bryan Koon on Disaster-Related Costs, Preparation and Resilience
At the start of each new year, the National Centers for Environmental Information at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) releases a report on the costs of the prior year’s disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts, severe local storms, and winter storms. At this time last year, NOAA announced that 2017 set a record […]
Looking Back a Year After Hurricane Irma: Interview with Bryan Koon, Florida’s Former Director of Emergency Management
September 10, 2018, marks the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Irma hitting the Florida mainland as a Category 4 storm. It caused the worst flooding in the state’s history and killed 75 Floridians. The damage to Florida has been estimated at $50 billion, and the state is still recovering. This first anniversary of Irma was the […]
Using Threat Vulnerability Asset (TVA) Methodology to Identify Cyber Threats and System Vulnerabilities in Emergency Management
In 2015, IEM published a primer for emergency managers describing the Internet of Things (IoT) and how it may be leveraged to advance the field of emergency management (Coffey, 2015). Sensor feeds from surveillance cameras and other sources, for example, can provide real-time information that can be used to potentially alter evacuation routes and synchronize […]
Fuel for Thought: What Hurricane Irma Taught Us About Evacuation Planning
After anticipating challenges with fuel availability, IEM partnered with GasBuddy, a company that provides a free app designed to help users locate gas stations and fuel prices in real-time. As Irma approached, GasBuddy made color-coded maps available to help residents identify which gas stations were out of power or out of fuel during the evacuation.
Establishing a Common Operating Picture for Chemical Weapons Emergencies
In the 1970s, devastating wildfires in California revealed several major faults in the command structure and gave rise to the Incident Command System (ICS), which later evolved into the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Today, the National Response Framework (NRF) builds upon those systems and defines a common operating picture (COP) as “a continuously updated […]
Tornado Season: Still Time to Prepare
In the disaster business, our focus for the last several months has been on the recovery from the unprecedented series of hurricanes and wildfires in 2017. But if you live in the U.S. Midwest and the South, you know that springtime brings with it another focus: tornadoes. Since it is difficult to predict the severity […]
Building back safer and stronger: A roadmap for Puerto Rico
Four months ago, Hurricane Maria brought untold devastation to the island of Puerto Rico. Countless lives were lost, communities were upended, and billions of dollars in damages were left in the storm’s wake. From the wreckage, we have seen communities emerge and come together; strangers becoming neighbors and neighbors becoming family. The people of Puerto […]
Citizen Preparedness: The Path to a National Culture of Preparedness
Disasters have cost taxpayers over $104 billion in nine years. That is, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the amount that the Disaster Relief Fund has paid out from fiscal years 2005 to 2014 for disaster response, recovery, and mitigation.[1] Just in the last eight years, there have been over 900 Presidentially declared disasters, […]
Concepts of Innovation and Maintenance in Emergency Management Planning
New Ideas and Old Problems Innovation and maintenance are terms tossed around a lot when it comes to emergency planning, and plenty of other fields and professions for that matter. An emergency plan might be considered innovative if it uses a new approach, promotes the use of new technology, or borrows ideas from other fields. […]
IEM and FEMA: Working Together to Save Lives in the Caribbean
At IEM, saving lives is the most important thing we help our customers do. Over the past several weeks, IEM Air™ (IEM’s air division) has been on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Reliable air operations are […]
