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CHAPTER SIX RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
6.1 One of the objectives of the research was to make recommendations with regard to the targeting of funding and resources and the methodology for collecting capabilities data in the future. This chapter thus presents our recommendations for consideration.
Training priorities
6.2 Within the scope of this research project a number of key areas have been identified whereby aspects of resilience capability could be enhanced through future training, as detailed below.
- With the apparent decline of knowledge, due to retirement and moving of trained staff to other fields, along with the limited numbers of key workers involved in emergency management, training is needed at all sections of the hierarchy to enable the system to be maintained if the key individuals are absent.
- Professional diplomas and other academic qualifications in the field of emergency planning or disaster management should be promoted to move Scottish emergency planning forward.
- The experience assessment exercise should be repeated on a larger scale as a general census across Scotland to give an indication of the benchmark from which future training strategies can be developed.
Resilience and capability gaps
6.3 This research project has identified a number of resilience and capability gaps where the targeting of resources should be prioritised:
- Scottish national capacity, per se, was not included in this research though it has been alluded to as being important across all of the SCG areas assuming there was a Scotland-wide incident. Further research is therefore essential to study what the coping capacity and strategies are within Scotland as a whole. This research should include the capacity to manage a crisis if Edinburgh, the seat of government, or Glasgow, the financial centre, - both of which have the bulk of the population and facilities - were subjected to a major disaster.
- With mitigation in mind, there is a need to test established plans across the whole of Scotland particularly testing the ability to deal with a 'multirisk' event.
- There is a need to determine what are perceived to be acceptable levels of risk so that plans can be developed accordingly and education of the public carried out where necessary.
- Planning for recovery and the need for resource allocation in this area would appear to be where one of the major gaps lies. Further research is needed to see that there is a seamless move from the response phase to a disaster/crisis to one of recovery. Plans should then be developed to ensure response is followed up officially by recovery and is not conducted on an ad hoc basis.
- Vulnerability assessment should be conducted alongside hazard identification, hazard evaluation, hazard vulnerability and hazard mitigation and covering social, economic and environmental issues. Without such knowledge one cannot determine what the risks are and who is most likely to be vulnerable.
- Community profiling needs be established at the local level and capacity building processes implemented in the light of the changes occurring with an ageing population and the likelihood that there will be far fewer volunteers in the near future. Such profiling should include the makeup of the SCG areas ethnic backgrounds and language needs. Community mapping outlining where the most vulnerable of the population are situated should be part of this profile.
- Systems for communicating with the public, including warning and informing and particularly during a mass emergency should be addressed at the national level to ensure adequate measures are in place across all regions.
Good practice
6.4 The following section details recommended areas of good practice:
- The Scottish Executive should continue its leading role in developing Scotland wide templates, as mentioned in this report.
- We recommend that following a disaster there be testing of the capacity of the local SCGs through a formal debrief and review. This should be conducted independent of government or agency.
- The Scottish Executive, in consultation with agency and community representatives, should develop a set of benchmarks against which improvements can be measured.
- The Scottish Executive should enter discussions with the SCG areas over the apparently divisive issue of how the funds are allocated so that equity is obtained.
- An annually updated inventory needs to be developed so as to assess what the risks are; the implementation plans to deal with such risks; and the range of treatment options. This should encompass community, local government, regional, cross-regional and national risks.
- The Scottish Executive should address the following major issues through discussion with the SCG areas and allocate resources and funds accordingly or at least provide reassurance that these will be forthcoming:
- Resources at the moment appear to be stretched to the limit and all SCG areas felt they would be unable to adequately respond to multiple disasters or cope with a pandemic without further stretching these resources beyond the limit.
- The perceived stresses relating to the increased workloads following the introduction of the Civil Contingencies Act need to be addressed.
- Funding for voluntary associations needs also to be addressed.
- The Scottish Executive in conjunction with the SCG areas should develop a national approach with regard to mutual aid and support to allow for consistency and ease of communication and exchange of information.
- To ensure the Risk Registers provide a comprehensive guide to hazards and risks at all levels, we recommend that the Scottish Executive establish a system for the submission and evaluation of the registers within a given time period. This would also mean that there would be a dynamic and strategic overview of hazards and risk at the national (Scotland wide) level.
Information management
6.5 With respect to the best way forward for collecting and updating information in the future the following points should be considered:
- A formal group should be established to undertake a cross-Scotland audit of plans, exercises and disaster management arrangements every 2-3 years.
- A critical review should be conducted to determine how past emergencies were dealt with and in the light of this review to test current mitigation plans along with tests of preparedness, response and lessons learnt.
- Field and tabletop exercises should be regularly carried out by an independent assessor to test capacity at council, regional and Scottish national levels and how these interact and work together as per the requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act. Testing and exercising should draw upon different methodologies. The results should be made available to the participants with a schedule for implementation of recommended changes.
- Annual, formal statements by SCGs to the relevant Minister should be required with regard to compliance and preparedness in each SCG area.
Further research
6.6 The following areas for further research would be recommended:
- Evaluation of 'Emergency Communications Arrangements'.
- Differentiated analysis of experience of communicating with the media and the public.
- Evaluation of whether experience/lessons identified are assimilated by other SCG Areas.
- Evaluation of the criteria under which sections of society are selected for the dissemination of civil contingencies information.
- Examination of the translation services available in terms of capacity and ability.
- Analysis of vulnerable groups within populations covered by the SCG Areas.
- Estimation of coverage of distributed information, potentially by method against media permeation into population.
- The SCG areas and Scottish Executive should draw out some of the variables in capability and to assess their significance - remoteness, isolation, (and not just those areas on the mainland or islands where they are quite isolated from services but the many workers on the oil rigs) diurnal factors, annual factors, tourism, ethnic backgrounds and transient populations, testing for system breakdown, human and also organisational behaviour.
- Research should be conducted to test the often expressed view that adequate funding needs to be made available to the SCG areas to enable them to carry out their work, particularly when a major crisis occurs and further costs are incurred. The SCG areas need to be reassured that funds will be made available if staff are not to be laid off and services cut.
Other issues arising
6.7 Other issues arising from this research are as follows
- The role of and recruitment to voluntary organisations should be examined to enable greater community engagement to occur. At the same time, representation of non-traditional organisations on the various committees needs to be considered. In line with this we would recommend the establishment of formal Voluntary Organisations Liaison Fora to provide a conduit for multilateral communication and feedback with the SCGs.
- The role and place of Faith Communities need to be examined and discussions should be entered in respect to how they can assist in disaster management and community recovery.
Methodology for further research
6.8 Disasters and the risk landscape they generate are dynamic and evolve and change over time. Equally communities, economies and their political context also change. To ensure the continued capability of disaster management arrangements a regime of continuous research is needed, although much of this research may be based upon 'horizon scanning' or the Delphi technique of an iterative set of questions discussed between key stakeholders and experts in the field. This is an inexpensive process, though ensuring compliance in terms of regular, prompt participation can be problematic.
6.9 More rigorous assessments can be based upon standard techniques of assessing hazard potential, such as flood or windstorm frequency and severity. These hazards can include natural and anthropogenic hazards. This has to be employed in conjunction with demographic analysis and analysis of infrastructure and commercial development.
6.10 There are standard methods for doing such research and the results can be usefully combined to graphic effect using Geographic Information System technology.
6.11 Such analysis of hazards and items at risk needs to be complemented by social science research that examines attitudes and norms to risks. The participant groups would include politicians (from all levels), emergency service personnel, civil servants, private sector personnel and members of the public. This analysis is useful because risks are ranked often not by their frequency of destructive potential but by how these are perceived. Risk assessment is a subjective process.
6.12 We also recommend further exploration of capacity to respond to, to recover from and to prevent emergencies and disasters. This may focus principally on SCG capability but must include the involvements of private companies and the voluntary sector.
6.13 Finally research needs to be conducted into how the various levels of Scottish government administration (local, regional and national) interact with each other and with their corresponding levels of civil administration as well as with business and the community. This assumes that there are state conditions that vary between levels. That is, that the national (Scotland wide) level is more than the sum of SCGs, though these are the components of the national.
6.14 Complexity theory and its application to disaster management research, currently being developed by the authors of this report, shows promise as a technique for identifying issues, establishing research questions and developing methods of analysis.
Summary
In brief we further recommend:
- Establishing a research schedule
- Employing appropriate methods, but ensuring that qualitative methods are employed as a balance to quantitative approaches and that norms and values are included as an object of study
- GIS tools and technologies are used to display results of risk assessment in a graphic format
- Future research address each level of government and administration and the interactions and dependencies between these horizontally and vertically
- The broad context (horizon scanning) be used regularly to identify emerging and changing risks
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