ABSTRACT
Emergency management involves four interrelated actions: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Mitigation focuses on taking actions to reduce risk. Preparedness recognizes that while mitigation actions can reduce risk, they do not eliminate the vulnerability to hazards. Preparedness actions seek to establish authorities and responsibilities for emergency actions and to assemble the resources to support these actions. Response involves actions to reduce casualties and save lives, protect property, and restore essential government services once an event has occurred, while recovery encompasses those efforts to restore the social and economic infrastructure and clean up, to the extent possible, the environment of the affected community following the emergency (FEMA 1996). One way to depict this is through the emergency response cycle (Figure 2.3.1), which is applicable to a wide range of potential threats ranging from natural disasters to terrorist bombings. The Emergency Response Cycle (From Thomas et al. 2002) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315810874/665ddaf8-2b06-440e-a8a9-58df0f180715/content/fig2_3_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
