chapter12-FEMA-FederalEmergencyManagementAgency.docVIP

CHAPTER 12 EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT STANDARDS AND EVALUATIONS As the practice of emergency management has undergone many changes over the past half century, so too has the conception of an emergency manager. As an emerging profession, emergency management needs to establish standards and evaluate compliance with those standards. This chapter begins by examining the concept of a profession and then identifies the process by which emergency management is moving toward professionalization. The chapter next turns to procedures for periodic evaluation of the local emergency management agency (LEMA) and local emergency management committee (LEMC). This section describes some general principles for organizational evaluation and then turns to National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard 1600, Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP), and National Incident Management System Capability Assessment Support Tool (NIMCAST). The chapter describes procedures for evaluating drills, exercises, and incidents and concludes with a discussion of procedures for evaluating organizational training and community risk communication programs. Introduction Although there are some differences in definitions, social scientists generally consider a profession to be a group of practitioners whose specialized education and training gives them the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed to perform the tasks within a specified work domain (Blanchard, 2004; Friedson, 2001). This definition has six important implications. First, practitioners are a group, not just a disorganized collection of individuals. To accomplish their objectives, practitioners organize themselves into a professional society. Second, the members of the professional society establish consensus on their work domain. That is, they agree on what tasks they perform that makes their profession different from other professions. Third, members of the profession define the KSAs that are required to perform the tasks wit