My "Eric's Corner Column" that is running in the current edition of Emergency Management Magazine is about the profession of emergency management and how complicated it has become. See Emergency Management Is a Complicated Profession
I would say the the use of the word "prevention" and how it almost replaced the word "mitigation" in the early days of the Department of Homeland Security is an example of how we are still confusing ourselves. Prevention had changed to eventually (in my mind) to what you do to prevent terrorism. That fit nicely with leaving "mitigation" about natural hazards. Now the word "protection" is also being used and I'm not quite sure at this point when and how mitigation, prevention and protection are appropriately used. I do know that "protection and prevention" have replaced "preparedness as one of the phases of emergency management. Now there are five and not four.
Maybe I'm the only one confused by all this changing of terminology, but words are important when you are trying to educate future generations of emergency managers and interact with others in your discipline. Anyone who has these three terms straight in their minds and how they are to be used appropriately--please leave a comment to this blog post.
I'm all for progress and improving things, but is this really progress?
