AUCSO has updated its guide to emergency management in universities, now titled Resilience in High Education. For more about the guide, contact Bernie Duncan, the former uni head of security who now is the chief operating officer of AUCSO, the association for university chiefs of security: email [email protected].
The document covers everything from writing and reviewing a plan to media and staff and student communications (including via social media) in an emergency, whether man-made or natural (such as flooding). Case studies include the floods at the University of Aberystwyth that caused halls of residence to be closed in January 2014; and the Virginia Tech shootings in the United States.
Also included are plenty of templates, and web links for further study. For instance there’s a checklist for a major incident, which can include fire, explosion, chemical contamination, asbestos release or other immediate serious safety issue.
To read the 140-page document visit the Hebcon (Higher Education Business Continuity Network) website – http://www.hebcon.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Resilience-in-Higher-Education-Institutions.compressed.pdf.
Intro
The chairman of AUCSO, Roger Morgan, security manager at the University of Sussex, introduces the guide. He writes: “The first edition in 2008 had as its mainspring a major fire at City University London, to which Professor Julius Weinberg referred to then in his foreword, and refers to again in this new edition. Since that first edition the HEI [Higher Education Institutions] community has grown substantially with increased numbers of students, staff and institutions, and the risks likely to give rise to an emergency incident have similarly increased. Fortunately few institutions experience a major fire or other emergency on the scale of that which struck City University but a number have had emergencies that have had significant impacts on university communities, affecting students, staff, visitors and everyone associated with the respective institutions.
“Since 2008 many institutions have taken positive steps to increase their resilience by establishing new processes for both business continuity and emergency management, and by training their staff in this field. AUCSO are proud to have produced the Emergency Management training course specifically for HEIs, which is still being delivered today.
“This revised Guide encapsulates experience and lessons learned from institutions around the world and sets out the steps to be considered and actions to be undertaken so that good organisation and planning will minimise any reliance on luck and maximise the benefit to be gained from professional staff rising to an exceptional challenge. The Guide is intended as an asset to university management and I hope it will be seen as such by senior management teams, with its effects reaching into all areas of emergency management and response. On behalf of AUCSO I am extremely grateful to Dr Lucy Easthope, and Bernadette Duncan, now our Chief Operating Officer, for their revision and updating of the Guide.”
