Emergency Incident Response: Planning, Response, and Recovery

This essay delves into the multifaceted realm of emergency incident response, focusing on the crucial principles that underpin effective management, particularly within the public sector. The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK is used as a case study. The essay elucidates the different stages of emergency incident response including mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, emphasizing the importance of proactive planning and collaboration. It provides examples of emergency incidents both in the UK and internationally, illustrating the diverse challenges faced by organizations and the need for robust response strategies. Furthermore, the essay underscores the significance of informing future planning and responding based on past experiences and evaluates the collaborative agency working involved and lessons learned from real-world emergency incidents. It highlights the need for continuous improvement and adaptation in the face of evolving threats and vulnerabilities.

ESSAY 1

Contents
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................3
Principles of effective emergency incident response........................................................3
Describe a recovery stage following an incident..............................................................4
Identify a range of examples of emergency incident, both in UK and International........4
Demonstrate the need to inform future planning and responding.....................................5
Role of public service in real world emergency incident..................................................5
Evaluate the collaborative agency working involved and lesson learned from real world
emergency incident...........................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Emergency incident response refers to the efforts of business operations to face
any natural disaster. It basically include group of volunteers who plan the ways to deal
with any incident before it pertains (Zhang, Li and Liu, 2012). For the better
understanding National Health Service which is a public organisation has been selected. It
basically provides various health services such as dental treatment as well as optical care
at a very minimal charge to the local residents of UK. This report covers following topics
such as principles of effective emergency incident response and recovery stage of at
emergency incident. Further, various examples are coded on emergency incident in UK
and internationally.
Principles of effective emergency incident response
Public sector organisation must predict the emergency state and accordingly they
should response against any hazard whether it is related to natural disaster, technology
hazard or terrorist attack. Thus, management of any disaster require the partnership among
various sector such as public, private or voluntary organisation. There are basically four
phases to effectively manage emergency incident responses which are defined below
(Wang, Luangkesorn and Shuman, 2012):
Mitigate phase: Within this stage most hazardous risk are identified, once those
risk are bought into the knowledge then efforts are made to mitigate the chances of risk
that can occur in near future. Herein, NHS organisation adopts this stage to maintain
smooth functioning of Business even in upcoming years as well. Like there could be the
chances of getting existing technology obsolete so here internal department and staff
voices on those measures that can reduce the chances of damage.
Preparedness: At this stage training and development session are provided to the
internal staff. In context to NHS organisation this phase helps in building the crises team
that look for different action to deal with risk. Along with this staff participates in any
natural disaster programme such as storm ready program or rescue operation to save the
lives of people. Therefore, this helps by remain prepared before the existence of any
emergency.
Response: Organisation must operate its business in such a manner their
performances or development should not hamper the environment. Herein, NHS each
public department gives importance to environment health and safety along with the
interest of society. On the basis of planning roles are assigned to both men and women
that include actions such as ways to save the lives and prevent damage. It includes actions
such as posting emergency telephone number and installation of smoke detector that helps
at the time of emergency.
Recovery: The role of recovery stage starts after the emergency to get back to
normal state which was before the existence of any emergency. In relation to NHS if faces

any incident such as flood or snow storm can adopt this stage like use of financial resource
to repair things in order to get back to safer situation
Describe a recovery stage following an incident
Recovery stage gets activated after the existence of any emergency or disaster to
save as well as protect the lives of people by bringing it back to the normal state. Some
hospital caught by fire few years back because of some natural calamity and because of
that those hospital suffers heavy losses, they didn’t have any plans to overcome the loss or
to compensate it (Lewis, 2012). Six steps need to be followed during a recovery stage. If
a company is following those steps properly the damage can be minimized. First step is
known as preparation plan in which the company trains their employees. After that the
company needs to identify the emergency incident and its implications as quickly as
possible. Company should try to contain the damage so that the loss can be minimized. A
company should employee every possible thing so that the loss can be minimized.
Eradication means eliminating the root cause because of which the loss is occurred.
Company should implement steps so that the loss can be recovered and company can
operate smoothly. Company should learn lesson out of the incident or disaster, they should
observe everything and make sure such thing is not repeated again. Moreover, there are
various laws and legislation such as Civil Contingency Act which include guidelines
related to coordination, information sharing, business continuity planning as well as
guidance for risk assessment which needs to be followed by NHS public organisation.
Therefore, the aim of recovery stage is to develop following guidance which is stated
below:
 There should be understand amongst various organisation to deal with any incident
even at local level
 Further, there should be understanding between local as well as national level
which helps them to function simultaneously at recovery stage.
Identify a range of examples of emergency incident, both in UK and International
Emergency incident hampers the working of the organization. Emergency incident
can occur due to natural disaster, technological failure or terrorist attack. Like for example
a terrorist attack can hamper that area where the attack is done, plus it can hamper the
business of companies due to the political factors after the terrorist attack. Natural
disasters are uncontrollable and it can affect the working of organization. It can cause
physical damage to the property of the organization. Technological factors are also
another case of emergency incident (Pfeffer, Israelife Foundation, 2012). A company
should have a backup plan for this type of emergency incident so that the damage can be
recovered as soon as possible. National health services is a company which is run by the
government so all the loss are compensated by the government as it is a public sector
undertaking. There were approximately five companies suffered heavily at the time of
floods in Thailand. The companies were Toyota, Canon, Ford, Lenevo, Sharp. Toyota had
to stop the production in some countries because of the break in supply chain. Ford also
losses around 30,000 vehicles production due to that natural calamity. Similarly lot of
companies around the globe had to suffer due to terrorist attack. In some of the case where

they can’t do much a reserve for such uncontrollable losses may come handy. So some
companies make reserves for such losses also. The main reasons of losses in such cases
are the wastage of time, the idle time because of that emergency incident. Another
example for emergency incident was cyber attack by terrorist which affected lot of
companies around the globe, the implications was loss in accounts, funds and lot of
valuable documents of the companies.
Demonstrate the need to inform future planning and responding
It is essential to conduct future planning and responding in emergency response
because it helps the public sector organisation to gain detail as well as accurate
information about how they will manage during the time of natural disaster or any
technology failure (Woodcock and Au, 2013). As business operates in dynamic
environment so pre planning helps business to achieve its long term growth prospective by
mitigate the chances of risk and respond effectively.
Role of public service in real world emergency incident
In order to take measure against any incident such as terrorist attack public
services come into action and help in the recovery of losses incurred due to that. For
instance, terrorist attack which took place in Manchester Arena in UK destruct lot of lives.
To overcome with this public service took various precautions though they cannot
compensate the lives of people who died in this incident but they helped to mitigate the
loss. Additionally, public services provide the benefit of insurance to the employee, give
relief to the company as compensation and rebuild the infrastructure of company (Burke,
2017).
Evaluate the collaborative agency working involved and lesson learned from real world
emergency incident
There are some losses which are controllable and some are uncontrollable thus it is
simpler to deal with controllable risk in comparison to other risk such as natural hazard. In
past UK has suffered because of natural disaster due to which there around seventeen
public bodies are collaborated to take the measure against natural disaster. Further, this
partnership provides information related to risk assessment to the legal body such as
government (Shan, et.al., 2012). This help to overcome the challenges by maintaining trust
within the society.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been defined that emergency incident response plays a
significant role in public sector organisation to make better policies before the existence of
unforeseen circumstances. This basically helps the company to mitigate the chances of
risk by reminding as per the guidelines that finally helps the busier to remain in safer
situation. Along with that company should follow all the legislation related to environment
health and safety in order to achieve sustainable development and face real world
emergency incident.

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Zhang, J. H., Li, J. and Liu, Z. P., 2012. Multiple-resource and multiple-depot emergency
response problem considering secondary disasters. Expert Systems with
Applications. 39(12). pp.11066-11071.
Wang, Y., Luangkesorn, K. L. and Shuman, L., 2012. Modeling emergency medical
response to a mass casualty incident using agent based simulation. Socio-Economic
planning sciences. 46(4). pp.281-290.
Pfeffer, A., Israelife Foundation, 2012. Incident response system. U.S. Patent 8,314,683.
Shan, S., et.al., 2012. An emergency response decision support system framework for
application in e-government. Information Technology and Management. 13(4).
pp.411-427.
Woodcock, B. and Au, Z., 2013. Human factors issues in the management of emergency
response at high hazard installations. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process
Industries. 26(3). pp.547-557.
Burke, R. A., 2017. Counter-terrorism for emergency responders. CRC Press.
Lewis, G. W., 2012. Critical incident stress and trauma in the workplace: Recognition...
Response... Recovery. Routledge.