Modeling and assessing capability-based planning for emergency preparedness

Abstract

Recent disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria have demonstrated the importance of preparing for large-scale emergencies and how an effective response can save lives. The Capability-Based Planning (CBP) framework, which consists of 32 core capabilities across five mission areas is a popular planning framework to help local, regional, state, and federal emergency management agencies plan for disasters. For state and local agencies, it is critical to effectively allocate funds to improve and sustain these capabilities. When allocating resources for emergency preparedness, it is important to understand the comprehensive systemic impact that improving or not sustaining a capability has on an organization’s ability to prepare and respond to emergencies. We develop methods and decision-support tools to identify and quantify the interdependencies among the 32 core capabilities in the CBP framework and how these interdependencies affect an organization’s ability to respond to disaster scenarios. We model these interdependencies and their influence on an organization’s ability to respond to disaster scenarios with Bayesian belief networks. This model is applied to the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s CBP framework to generate insights into the current state of Iowa’s emergency preparedness and response and demonstrate different types of analyses that can be conducted. This research can help emergency management organizations at every level analyze the comprehensive and systemic impacts of sustaining and improving capabilities and the organization’s ability to respond to disaster scenarios.