By Allison G. S. Knox
Contributor, EDM Digest
Most people understand a routine discussion of emergency management. But when the Incident Command System (ICS) is involved, non-emergency management personnel will have difficulty understanding the concept.
There is an area of public administration scholarship that covers emergency management techniques. While these techniques are interesting to scholars, it is sometimes clear that those who write about and study emergency management efforts don’t have a clear sense of what ICS is or how it functions.
ICS Discussions Need to Happen More Often in Academia
People who work in emergency management are accustomed to a high-stress, fast-paced environment. But for others who have never assisted in an emergency situation, just the thought of dealing with one overwhelms them.
How individuals come together under pressure and how they manage crises is a recent addition to the study of emergency management. Community resiliency is another area of scholarship that defines society, social communities and the relationships between individuals within these groups.
When the Incident Command System is omitted from these academic discussions, those of us in the field wonder whether those academics know of the ICS and how it works.
Lack of ICS Knowledge By Public Officials Hampers Local Policy Decisions
If emergency managers don’t read ICS articles, will this lack of understanding affect emergency management? The answer is probably not, although ICS could affect policy tremendously.
When it comes to issues of budgets and resource management, emergency managers need to explain the Incident Command System to local officials and how it works. They could also be reading literature that doesn’t mention ICS, either.
It is important for emergency managers to bridge these knowledge gaps to attain the resources and budgets they need. At the same time, they need to realize that non-emergency personnel may have no understanding of the issues that are perhaps most important to the field of emergency management.