Author: Bradley A Wayland
ISBN No: 9780128023846
Review date: 20/04/2024
No of pages: 264
Publisher: Elsevier
Publisher URL:
http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780128023846
Year of publication: 14/08/2015
Brief:
Emergency Preparedness for Business Professionals: How to Mitigate and Respond to Attacks Against Your Organization
price
£31.44
Emergency Preparedness for Business Professionals: How to Mitigate and Respond to Attacks Against Your Organization by Bradley A Wayland.
Published 2015 by Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN : 9780128023846, paperback, 264 pages: online price £31.44. Visit www.elsevier.com.
As an American author, Wayland uses American cases as his examples, such as school and college shootings (Columbine High School particularly) and Hurricane Katrina, but his opening point applies in the UK as the US: that avoiding the work on emergency response – in the hope ‘it’ll never happen’ or in the belief that if the worst happens, you will manage – is mere excuses. Prioritise the risks; delegate to various members of a ‘crisis management team’. And as for believing that you’ll react well to an emergency, bear in mind that the police and fire who routinely respond to emergencies, also train continually. In the long run, he argues, ‘emergency response planning and preparation will save organisations money’. Talking of money, one case study is of embezzlement from a small firm, which shows that an ‘emergency’ may not be an act of God or man-made explosion, but something as mundane – and devastating – as a thieving employee.
He goes on to the types of incidents you may have to plan for; and mitigation, ‘balancing security measures with business efficiencies’. Those security measures may be physical,or information, or personnel. As for preparedness itself, he goes into communications; command and control; the collection and distribution of resources (as one is no use without the other); and coordination and congestion (that is, bottlenecks to iron out). Only then comes how you actually react; whether staff evacuate or take to shelter. Here for example Wayland looks at ‘active shooters’, suggesting that going into lock-down might suit the shooter. This shows that you need a process, to decide whether to go for evacuation or lockdown; and yet when the incident happens you need to make a decision, quickly, to ensure safety ‘of the maximum number’; enough to make a reader pause. Wayland looks then at recovery, which could take years, whether a physical clearing up or returning to ‘business as usual’ with customers.
Chapter One – Emergency Incidents
Chapter Two – Emergency Response Planning Factors
Chapter Three – Mitigation
Chapter Four – Preparedness
Chapter Five – Response
Chapter Six – Recovery
Chapter Seven – The Crisis Management Team
Chapter Eight – Emergency Response Training
Chapter Nine – Emergency Response Exercises
Chapter Ten – Responding to Emergency Incidents
Chapter Eleven –Case Studies of Actual Emergency Incidents
Chapter Twelve – Legislation Related to Emergency Response
Appendix A – Example: Emergency Response Plan
Appendix B – Emergency Response Checklists
