It is important to develop advanced data management and data processing mechanisms to support disaster detection, disaster response and control, rescue resource planning and scheduling, and emergency commanding.
In his view, successful disaster response occurs not through command from above but through loose networks of formal organizations and informal professions that maintain broad agreement about shared goals and responsibilities.
We firmly believe that by combining social and machine intelligence, riskmap can effectively plug the gaps between traditional command and control models of disaster response.
That's saying a great deal when you consider that this is the man whose crack plan for disaster response involved building the city emergency command center in one of the towers of the best-known terrorist targets in the nation.
Most intriguing, in 2002, he was put in command of a mock disaster response effort in an exercise that the Coast Guard conducted with ExxonMobil, one of the other big three oil companies.
We believe it essential that, in addition to involvement at the local level, all intensivists be acquainted with disaster response activation procedures as well as the roles and the responsibilities of various levels of command and control groups when disaster plans are activated.
In the area of disaster response, recommendations by the 9/11 panel to strengthen and streamline command-and-control procedures during major disasters had mixed success, commissioners found.
There are four widely accepted elements for a successful disaster response: 1) an existing comprehensive, coordinated, well-functioning E.M.S. system; 2) a clear-cut administrative command structure; 3) an identifiable medical authority, and 4) periodic, realistic, unannounced large-scale drills.
At the federal level, the disaster management system is called the National System of Civil Defense (SINDEC) and is coordinated by the National Secretariat of Civil Defense (SEDEC) at the Ministry of National Integration, which has been traditionally commanded by retired army officers with policies and actions focused in disaster response.
As we move into an examination of federalizing disaster response, for the sake of brevity we shall focus on these two issues, namely evacuation, and command and control of the response effort.
