00:09
So we've had an introduction to emergency management.
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I don't know about you, but often I get asked why I'm into
00:14
emergency management.
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Let's explore that a little.
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Why do government agencies invest in emergency
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management?
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Well, often, there are international conventions that
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require them to do so, agreements that governments
00:26
have entered into that they will assist others and be
00:29
prepared themselves.
00:31
There are legal responsibilities within
00:33
countries, legislation that requires parts of the
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government to be prepared for or respond to and recover from
00:40
emergencies, and also to reduce the risk from
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emergencies.
00:45
There's a desire to achieve effectiveness and efficiency.
00:50
So governments get involved in emergency management to build
00:53
those capabilities.
00:55
There's community wide responsibilities, communities
00:58
feeling that it's the right thing to do to meet the needs
01:01
of themselves and neighbouring communities.
01:04
There are inter-organization relationships.
01:07
Organisations have roles within emergency management.
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And there are dependencies with other organisations.
01:13
So it's about working together, a desire to do so.
01:17
There is a professional focus increasingly within emergency
01:20
management, where people see that it's important that they
01:22
understand what emergency management means so that they
01:25
can build their own capability and make a contribution in an
01:28
effective way as an individual professional contributing to
01:32
the discipline.
01:33
There are also moral responsibilities, for
01:36
organisations to be able to meet the needs of their
01:39
communities.
01:40
Often, that's a bottom line for government organisations.
01:43
If they are unable to meet the expectations of communities in
01:46
the lead up to, during, and after emergencies, that moral
01:50
responsibility comes back to visit them.
01:52
Often, it will become a reality for politicians at the
01:55
next election if they're unable to meet that moral
01:58
responsibility.
01:59
So there are some of the reasons why organisations,
02:02
particularly government organisations, become involved
02:04
in emergency management.
02:06
But why do individuals get involved in emergency
02:08
management?
02:09
There's often a desire to contribute, to make a
02:11
difference.
02:13
That's one of the reasons that I got involved in emergency
02:15
management, to enable my communities where I was living
02:17
at the time to be more resilient to the risks that
02:20
they faced.
02:21
Contributing to community safety is often a driver for
02:24
people to be involved in emergency management.
02:26
Sometimes, it's a sense of duty.
02:28
People feel an obligation to do so.
02:30
Maybe it's part of the role within their
02:31
culture or their community.
02:34
So they are encouraged to do so by a sense of duty.
02:37
There may be drivers to become involved in emergency
02:40
management from individuals who have a higher perception
02:43
of the risk that their communities face than others
02:46
around them.
02:46
So they'll get involved through those reasons.
02:49
There may be volunteer opportunities.
02:51
People want to get involved in a volunteer organisation and
02:53
make a difference that way, or they want to feel involved and
02:57
members of an organisation.
02:58
So they become involved in emergency management through a
03:01
side door, if you like.
03:03
There are non-government organisations who often have
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an international reach.
03:06
And that has an appeal for individuals to be involved in
03:09
that, to feel like they're not only making a difference at
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home, but they have the ability to make a difference
03:14
elsewhere, as well.
03:16
There can be career opportunities.
03:17
People want to get involved in emergency management because
03:19
they can see an opportunity to build a career for themselves.
03:23
So that's some of the drivers for involvement in emergency
03:25
management today.
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Let's look back in time for a moment to consider where
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emergency management's come from.
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We can go right back to prehistory, and this image
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we're looking at, the Nile Delta, flying into the
03:38
Mediterranean at the top of the picture.
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There is evidence in this part of the world of emergency
03:43
management type approaches dating back thousands of
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years, particularly in relation to risk reduction as
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communities dealt with the ebbing and following of the
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Nile River over the seasons.
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Knowledge about hazards and the ability to deal with them
03:58
was passed on predominantly through oral accounts, that
04:03
understanding of risk was able to be passed on from
04:05
generation to generation.
04:08
So the ability to deal with risks was predominantly
04:12
grounded in experience.
04:14
That knowledge enabled risk avoidance behaviours to be
04:17
established.
04:18
This could be seen to be the foundation for emergency
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management.
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More recently, over the last several hundred years,
04:26
particularly through the Industrial Revolution, we've
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seen new hazards develop through industrialisation.
04:32
Populations have exploded.
04:33
And so there is increased exposure to those risks.
04:36
We've seen the development of engineered approaches to
04:39
reducing risk.
04:40
We're going to talk more about that in later
04:42
parts of this course.
04:44
More recently, we experienced World War II, and then the
04:47
threat of atomic war.
04:50
We saw a civil defence model established during World War
04:53
II in response to some of the military activities,
04:56
particularly aerial bombing that occurred during that war.
05:00
Subsequently, that civil defence model developed during
05:03
the atomic era and in the Cold War.
05:06
Within the civil defence model, a strong command of
05:09
control element was established, expecting that
05:12
there would be groups of individuals trained as
05:15
volunteers in the community to be able to manage the
05:18
response, delivering emergency management, if you like, to
05:21
the communities.
05:23
Later in the Cold War era, it was found that the structures,
05:26
processes, and capabilities that had been put in place to
05:29
deal with the military threat were able to be applied to
05:32
natural hazard events, as well.
05:35
So the command of control model was applied
05:37
to those, as well.
05:39
Most recently, from the 1980s onwards, the end of the Cold
05:43
War, a more comprehensive approach was applied.
05:46
There was little need to have the focus on
05:49
the military threat.
05:51
So there was an opportunity to reconfigure emergency
05:53
management.
05:54
More of the all hazards approach became apparent.
05:58
As we become more dependent on technology, there was a focus
06:02
on dealing with not just natural hazards but a wider
06:05
range of hazards.
06:06
It was found also that the cost of focusing on response
06:10
in particular was costing our communities too much.
06:14
organisations and individuals become involved in emergency
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management.
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In this topic, let's carry on with some of the themes we
00:17
reached at the end of that topic and explore the
00:21
evolution of emergency management to what it is today
00:24
and where it's just going.
00:26
From civil defence routes in the Cold War and its focus on
00:29
one single military hazard, we saw an increasing emphasis on
00:34
natural hazards.
00:35
As events occurred around the world that those structures we
00:38
used to respond to, they were found to be effective in
00:42
dealing with response.
00:44
During that period there was also increased knowledge about
00:47
natural hazards in particular.
00:49
There was also increased understanding of human factors
00:52
of emergency management.
00:54
Part of that was the growth or the use of computers--
00:57
the ability to better understand the
00:59
world in which we lived.
01:01
A deeper understanding of the hazards and risks that we
01:03
faced was able to be achieved.
01:06
There was an opportunity to understand that it wasn't just
01:10
being ready to respond to
01:12
emergencies that was important.
01:14
It was understanding the causes of them and the
01:16
opportunities to build resilience into communities
01:19
that began to inform the practise of what we now
01:22
understand today to be emergency management.
01:26
The icon on the screen now was adopted during the 1950s by
01:30
civil defence organisations all around the world.
01:34
It's still often used today in emergency management.
01:38
Although the processes and structures and roles that it
01:41
represents have changed, the basis for it
01:44
for remains the same.
01:46
There's some issues with that because some of the command
01:49
and control, top down, single hazards-based approach of the
01:56
previous civil defence model still has
01:58
some hangovers today.
02:00
At the end of the Cold War in the 1980s and the bringing
02:04
down of the Berlin Wall, we saw an international change in
02:07
approaches to what security was.
02:10
There was more of an emphasis on a broader range of
02:13
community security and safety, moving away from a
02:17
military-focused model to a more holistic and inclusive
02:20
model of what safety was.
02:22
It was also found during the 1960s and '70s, through a
02:26
range of very severe events, that just attempting to
02:30
prepare for them and then responding was costing our
02:34
communities far too much in monetary terms and in
02:38
well-being terms.
02:40
There had to be a better way.
02:42
That better way was seen to be better understanding the risks
02:46
that we faced, working towards reduced the risks, rather than
02:50
just responding to them when they arrived.
02:53
Interestingly, although reliance on technology was
02:56
assisting in better understanding the hazards that
02:59
we faced, that incr