Timothy W. Sevison

 Agenda  What is White Space  ICS and NIMS  System Failures  Emergency versus Disaster and Incident Complexity  ICS White Space Issues  Management and Leadership of the White Space  Objectives  Discuss the complexities involved in the management of emergencies and disasters and recognition of the significance of the white space in our typical ICS organizational model

 Tasks and decisions fall outside of the organizational chart  Policies, statutes and authorities are unclear or ill defined  Strategy is unclear  Areas where hand-offs and cross-functional activities occur

 ICS is a hierarchical bureaucratic system that is intended to prevent the traditionally slow response of bureaucracies by having scalable pre-scripted roles and responsibilities  NIMS expands on the concepts of ICS and is a uniformed set of processes and procedures to be used at all levels of government during large-scale disasters

 Hurricane Andrew  Murrah Federal Building Bombing  9-11  Hurricane Katrina  Deep Water Horizon

EMERGENCY (SIMPLE)DISASTER (COMPLEX)  Predictable  Situational Awareness is achievable  Known incident parameters  Involves relatively small number of interacting elements and resources  Effectiveness of tactics readily apparent  Unpredictable  Situational Awareness is difficult or unachievable  Unknown or difficult to define parameters  Involves large number of interacting elements and resources  Effectiveness of solutions difficult to determine

 Experience  Local familiarity  Predictability  Direct cause and effect  Repetition

 Disasters by definition are complex events  The ICS organization will continually evolve (emerge) as it becomes a more complex system  Focus on form over function  Activity Trap  9-11 Logistics  Katrina NOC information  Katrina USCG-FEMA (FCO-PFO) issue

 Focus on Objective (MBO) versus Outcome  Apollo 13  Cave Collapse  Failure to recognize queue based (experienced) decision making  Evaluation of effectiveness of heuristic decision (trial and error) not timely  Planning for last disaster as opposed to next disaster  Known knowns, Known unknowns, Unknown unknowns

 Recognize Complexity  Increase cross-functional interaction  Allow, embrace and support spontaneous organization  Decision points versus Decisive Points  Solutions not imposed, rather opportunities recognized and exploited  Promote ideas and non-linear thinking  Tiger Teams (Apollo 13)

 Look for what works as opposed to what is “supposed” to be done  Solicit innovative and creative approaches  Increase horizontal organizational interaction  Challenge assumptions and personal bias  Our plan was perfect except the storm began sooner than expected  Ownership, turf, etc..

 Krill, S. (2010) Emergency Management Higher Education Conference presentation  Snowden, D. & Boone, M. (2007) A Leaders Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review. November 2007  U.S. Government (2006) hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared. Chapter  Koehler, G. (1995). What Disaster Management Can Learn from Chaos Theory.  Maletz, M. & Nohria, N. (2001). Managing the Whitespace. HBS Working Knowledge.  Franco, Z. & et al (2009). Evaluating the Impact of Improvisation on the Incident Command System. content/uploads/2009/05/iscram2009_final.pdfhttp:// content/uploads/2009/05/iscram2009_final.pdf  Ray, D., & Elder, D. (2007). Managing Horizontal Accountability. up.com/pdfs/mha.pdfhttp:// up.com/pdfs/mha.pdf