ABSTRACT
Effective emergency management saves lives, protects the environment and property, and helps reassure the surrounding community that the facility is well managed in spite of the incident. This chapter introduces three key concepts which set the foundation for successfully managing incidents: how an organization defines its incidents, how an organization defines emergencies, and how an organization needs to tie six phases to effectively manage its emergency responses and incident investigations. These six phases include responding, recovering, investigating, planning, changing and sustaining. Each facility should have an Emergency Response Plan (ERP) that is activated when an emergency occurs. The ERP begins with designated incident-response personnel relocating to a central location for communications, a where all activities are coordinated by a designated incident commander. The chapter concludes with an approach for better understanding incidents, using a case study to show how the bow tie diagram can be used to illustrate both event-related and systemic-related weaknesses which ultimately led to the incident.
