EOC Design Considerations
An Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is a complex facility that serves as a nerve center during both small emergencies and large disasters. There are five primary considerations for the design and construction of a new [...]
Selling an Emergency Notification System within Your Organization
Today, most Business Continuity professionals recognize the need and value of an emergency notification system. But, as with so many other BCP requirements, the budget isn’t there. So what is a BCP professional to do? [...]
When the Power Went Out…
Toyota’sPlan Kept the Supply Chain Moving At Toyota Financial Services (TFS), every emergency event teaches us new lessons, helps us improve our emergency management program, and lets us evaluate how we can best protect our [...]
Surviving Ike: Lessons Learned at Texas Health Care Company
Ike presented many companies with the ultimate test of their previous business continuity planning efforts. A health care company — responsible for managing cancer treatment centers through the US with offices in north Houston and [...]
Comprehensive Testing Creates “Operational Familiarity” Between Companies and Their Disaster Recovery Providers
During the recovery efforts following Hurricane Ike, organizations that conducted comprehensive tests of their recovery plans were operational in the allotted time with very little – if any – complications. One of the benefits observed [...]
A Real Test: What Did We Learn?
Three years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Ike offered the disaster management community an opportunity to implement the lessons learned. How did the country measure up? Disaster Resource Guide finds out. As Hurricane Ike [...]
Selecting an Emergency Communications Solution
As organizations continue to mature in the development of Business Continuity plans (people/work group/departments) versus Disaster Recovery plans (technology), the need for mass notification tools has grown. In 2007, industry understanding of the importance of [...]
Evacuation Planning In Texas Before and After Hurricane Rita
In late September 2005, as Hurricane Rita tore through the Gulf of Mexico, millions of Texas residents evacuated their homes with fresh memories of Hurricane Katrina. Although Rita did not wreak the havoc its predecessor [...]
Facing the Challenge of Data Interoperability
There is a misconception that interoperability pertains only to voice communications. And certainly, for first responders who are actually on the scene, voice communications interoperability cannot be more critical. But in our focus on voice [...]
Building the Business Case for Emergency Notification How to Justify Your Investment and Accelerate Your ROI
Floods ravaged northern California and tornados took lives and destroyed property in the Midwest this year. The Gulf Coast and New Orleans still lay largely in ruins from the onslaught of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. [...]
Public-Private Collaboration: What’s in it for Each?
P&O Stena Line's computer systems that manage the loading of ferries at Dover Docks are highly resilient, being split between two data centers two miles apart. However, when a technical fault crashed the system, police [...]
The Challenges of Emergency Management Planning in 2005
Emergency management planning today faces many critical obstacles, such as an imbalance of focus between homeland security and natural disaster management, the challenge of involving the public in preparedness planning, the lack of an effective [...]