What do you do if your disaster response planning needs feedback and evaluation?

Regular feedback and evaluation are essential for effective disaster response planning. One approach is to establish mechanisms for continuous improvement, such as post-event debriefings, surveys, and after-action reviews. These methods allow emergency management teams to gather insights from all stakeholders, including responders, community members, and partner agencies. Analyzing feedback and data helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement in the response plan.

To improve your disaster response planning, seek feedback from stakeholders, including emergency responders, employees, and community members, to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Evaluate your plan regularly to ensure it aligns with current best practices and addresses new risks. Incorporate lessons learned from real incidents and drills to continually enhance your disaster preparedness.

I believe it's important to gather input from everyone involved, such as my team, local authorities, and the community. After both drills and real emergencies, organize structured discussions to hear all viewpoints. This input is essential for pinpointing areas that need attention and improvement. Analyze the data on response times and resource allocation to assess how well the plan worked. With this feedback, make specific changes to strengthen our response strategies and tactics to ensure our plans remain strong and efficient.

An internal review is a continuous and ongoing process till the disaster response has been declared complete and normalcy has been restored. It is not a one time effort. It is to be resorted to on a weekly, daily, even on an hourly basis at times. And an internal review is not a fault finding mission but rather a response efficacy correction methodology. The key aspect that needs to be answered at the end of each internal review is, “are my resources best utilised in entirety to provide maximum possible response to the disaster hit zone?” Of the answer to the above yardstick is an absolute and resounding “yes”; then the review is complete for the time being.

Exercises train skills and skills are important. However it is choosing the right combination of skills in that particular circumstance that results in a successful outcome. Simulations are generally run to a plan, or timetable. Real emergencies are not. I believe having an emergency management process in place is more fluid and enables adapting to situations more rapidly, picking and choosing the skills and responses needed in any particular situation. The best plan you can have is an activation and communications plan. Other than that emergencies don't really follow a set 'plan', they tend to have a mind of their own.

Conducting emergency exercises, tabletops, full-scale, or otherwise, is the only true way to evaluate the effectiveness of your emergency planning. Develop your emergency plans through a process of stakeholder collaboration. Vet your plans through a process of peer and stakeholder review/feedback. Conduct awareness and educational sessions for those who play a role. Then conduct an exercise to evaluate the plans. Once the exercise is completed, conduct an after action review to determine any needed updates or lessons learned. Incorporate those updates into your plans and repeat the process. It should be an ongoing cyclical process that makes sure your plans are living documents always being reviewed, updated, trained on, and exercised on.

Experts consultation is a part of step one in this article - gathering information. It could prove to be fatal to wait on this step. Experts are people who have made mistakes and learnt. Ignoring this abundant knowledge from the word go is fool hardy in every sense of the word. Additionally, an expert is not necessarily renowned. He/she is simply experienced in similar situations. Identification of experts is also critical when dealing with disaster relief.

Efficiency of the feedback loop is probably the single most critical factor in the success of any emergency or disaster response. Obtaining feedback is important, analysing the obtained feedback to enhance operational response is equally critical. Most of the emergency response teams are so focused on resource allocation in the initial phase of emergency response that they fail to even acknowledge feedback, let alone analyse it. This is the primary reason the initial allocation of resources are usually wasted heavily. This must be avoided at all costs.

Prior to any deployment of resources during an emergency the team should be well aware of the documentation process that best suits your agency. Whether using recorded radio transmissions, body worn cameras, dash cameras, drones, or even an old fashioned pencil and paper, the team needs to know how to document all aspects of the ongoing incident. Once the content is compiled the team can collate and asses during post mortem meetings where we hash out the wins and losses for future operation planning.

If your disaster response planning needs feedback and evaluation, there are several steps you can take to gather input and assess its effectiveness. Here's a general outline of what you can do: 1. Conduct a post-incident review: 2. Collect feedback from participants: 3. Engage with community members: 4. Review incident reports and documentation: 5. Seek external expertise: 6. Conduct tabletop exercises and simulation: 7. Analyze performance metrics: 8. Update and revise the plan: Remember, disaster response planning is an ongoing process, and regular feedback and evaluation are crucial to ensure continuous improvement.

Utilizing all your resources you have at hand is so critical and the lessons learned and synopsis after the incident reduces the potential of future mistakes.