For a forward-thinking organization, the prospect of an emergency or disaster is not a matter of 'if' but of 'when', and of course, the problem is that when there is an emergency, the costs of getting a little help can range from the outrageous to the criminal, for various reasons... so a little bit of planning can go a long way in
- Ensuring that adequate and appropriate resources will be available for emergencies
- Controlling costs in emergencies
- Preventing some types of emergencies
- Reducing the scale of some types of emergencies
- Recovering from other types of emergencies
There are various types of emergencies:
- Big Emergencies, such as:
- Terrorist attacks
- Leadership Vacuums
- Imminent Collapses of Governments
- Civil Wars
- World Wars
- Major accidents such as reactor meltdowns
- Isolated incidents such as airplane or single occupancy vehicle crashes
- Forest fires
- Acute air and/or water pollution
- Contamination of food supply
- Shutdown of Public Transport Systems
- Shutdown of Commercial Transport Systems
- Viruses or Pandemics
- Small Emergencies, such as:
- Hard Drive Crashes
- RAID Server Crashes
- Database Corruption
- Internet Down
- Projects Running Late
- Missed Deadlines / Late for Work
- Financial Problems or Bankruptcies
There are many ways to plan and prepare for emergencies, such as:
- Keeping extra food and supplies
- Paying for early warning in case of emergencies such as tornadoes or earthquakes or terrorist attacks
- Providing regular Emergency Preparedness Training
- Establishing 'If and When' Contracts to ensure that the appropriate resources can be made available in case of emergency for not-too-exhorbitant prices.
- Assessing the most likely emergencies and taking steps to prevent or reduce the impact of the emergencies.
