When was the last time you updated your Hazard Identification Vulnerability Assessment (HIVA)? Does it include cyber threats and Near Earth Objects (NEO)?
First to cyber threats. Be it from hackers or foreign governments the threats to our IT systems keep increasing. As emergency managers we must take a broad perspective on hazards to our organizations. I can expect some emergency managers would say that this is not their responsibility. "We have IT professionals who worry about that." I think the same could be said for pandemic flu planning. There are the healthcare professionals "who worry about that too."
We have a broader mission of coordinating and facilitating among many types of organizations and functions. If you leave cyber issues only up to the IT types they will take a narrow view of what they do. Generally, they are not concerned with the interdependencies of systems. They look to take care of just their networks. The best time to get involved with a program or project is at its inception before hard lines are drawn. Those lines are being drawn now on the topic of cyber security. My recommendation would be to start by getting a dialog going with your internal IT professionals and then add cyber security to your HIVA so that you and they have better understanding of what system outages can do as we move more and more to an ecommerce type of government and economy.
Next is the issue of NEO, call them asteroids or just big rocks--their impact on earth can have devastating consequences. Two things I learned from reading the most current edition of the Natural Hazards Observer this morning, see the article "Just Use the Force, Obi-Wan."
Not that many years ago I would have said that it was too far fetched a possibility to add to our HIVA. Today I'm not so sure. You could add this one in with the impacts of a nuclear explosion. My question is how much warning might we have and how accurate could they be about where the object will come in contact with earth. With some warning we can move people out of harms way. Finding every 70 meter rock out floating on a collision course with earth is another issue.
I tell people that being an emergency manager is not rocket science, but in this case we need some of those folks on our team!
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First to cyber threats. Be it from hackers or foreign governments the threats to our IT systems keep increasing. As emergency managers we must take a broad perspective on hazards to our organizations. I can expect some emergency managers would say that this is not their responsibility. "We have IT professionals who worry about that." I think the same could be said for pandemic flu planning. There are the healthcare professionals "who worry about that too."
We have a broader mission of coordinating and facilitating among many types of organizations and functions. If you leave cyber issues only up to the IT types they will take a narrow view of what they do. Generally, they are not concerned with the interdependencies of systems. They look to take care of just their networks. The best time to get involved with a program or project is at its inception before hard lines are drawn. Those lines are being drawn now on the topic of cyber security. My recommendation would be to start by getting a dialog going with your internal IT professionals and then add cyber security to your HIVA so that you and they have better understanding of what system outages can do as we move more and more to an ecommerce type of government and economy.
Next is the issue of NEO, call them asteroids or just big rocks--their impact on earth can have devastating consequences. Two things I learned from reading the most current edition of the Natural Hazards Observer this morning, see the article "Just Use the Force, Obi-Wan."
- The rocks don't have to be all that big. One described as being only 70 meters across devastated more than 2,000 square kilometers of forest in 1908.
- The damage is caused by the impact on earth, but it comes in contact with the earth's atmosphere and explodes.
Not that many years ago I would have said that it was too far fetched a possibility to add to our HIVA. Today I'm not so sure. You could add this one in with the impacts of a nuclear explosion. My question is how much warning might we have and how accurate could they be about where the object will come in contact with earth. With some warning we can move people out of harms way. Finding every 70 meter rock out floating on a collision course with earth is another issue.
I tell people that being an emergency manager is not rocket science, but in this case we need some of those folks on our team!
