Jasper Cooke EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This thesis aims to answer the question: What drives resilience at the state level in the United States? Specifically, we have tried to address the lack of a clear success metric for broad goals of increasing security or resilience. Further, within the broad range of activities that states can engage in…
Emergency Management
An Exploratory Analysis of Emergency Preparedness for Regional Transit Centers
Marcia Raines EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This thesis evaluates emergencies that are likely to occur in metropolitan transportation centers and the challenges emergency managers face when preparing for them. With infrastructure and people concentrated in one area, an emergency event—such as an earthquake or terrorist attack—can be devastating. Specifically, this thesis argues that all the transportation facilities…
Just-in-Time Training Considerations for Rural Emergency Operations Centers
Tiffany Brown EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A county emergency operations center (EOC) is an integral component of local disaster management as it serves several critical functions essential to saving lives, protecting property, and helping communities respond to and recover from an event. Trained EOC personnel are vital to maintaining operational continuity during a large disaster, yet the…
The Nevada Family: Political Crisis Leadership and Resilience Narratives in the Silver State
Caleb Cage EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Emergencies and disasters are inherently political events. Major crises in the United States in recent years have transformed political careers, for better or worse. Further, scholars have taken an interest in determining the political factors involved with these emergencies and disasters and the political crises they produce, seeking to determine how…
Unpacking and Exploring the Relationship between Crisis Management and Social Media in the Era of ‘Smart Devices’
by Eric K. Stern Abstract The rise of social media and the broad diffusion of ‘smart devices’ in contemporary society have profound implications for crisis management. The emergence of social media and smart devices pose both major challenges and major opportunities to crisis managers (c.f. Palen, 2008; Veil et 2011). These social practices and technologies…
Adaptive Standard Operating Procedures for Complex Disasters
Shawn Harwood EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The nature of disasters has evolved, but emergency management has not kept pace with the change. Today’s crisis environment is subject to countless influences—a product of our globalized, complex society—which produce random and volatile events. Despite the unpredictability of modern disasters, the Homeland Security Enterprise still adheres to prediction-dependent standard operating…
The Role of Schools and their Capabilities to Ensure Safe Sheltering During a Storm
Donalyn Dela Cruz EXECUTIVE SUMMARY During a major storm event that activates school shelters for citizens, three overarching areas require consideration: the practice of schools as shelters, the safety and security of a facility, and the role of government. This thesis brings attention to these areas, which are lacking in Hawaii, and examines cases in…
Moral Hazard: How the National Flood Insurance Program Is Limiting Risk Reduction
Kevin Starbuck EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Moral hazard is a concept that originated in the early insurance industry with broad application in economics, law, and policy debate. Moral hazard is defined as when people do not assume the full risk of an action or decision; people are not inclined to make a fully responsible or moral choice;…
Missing the Mark: Is NIMS ICS Training Achieving Its Goal?
Eric Seibel EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Incident Command System (ICS) was designed in the 1970s to handle large-scale incidents, with its first incarnation developed to battle wildfires in California. The National Wildland Coordinating Group remains a staunch example of the system’s ability to effectively handle large-scale incidents. The Phoenix Fire Department saw the advantages of ICS…
Blueprints for Disaster: Balancing Secrecy and Transparency of Government Continuity Plans
Stephen Vollbrecht EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Focusing primarily on succession planning and continuity of government in the event of a catastrophe, continuity planning has been a part of the preparedness landscape since at least the Cold War.[1] After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the government specifically mandated that all federal agencies have a continuity of…