Discuss the emergency preparedness cycle and the role that disaster planning plays in the preparedness process.
Are You In Line?
The emergency preparedness cycle has many components, but for this assignment we are going to focus on one of the most important drivers of the cycle and that is resources. A resource can be anything including time and time, unfortunately, is the only resource that we cannot make more of and it will always be limited. Therefore, our goal as the emergency manager is to build a preparedness program that is cognizant of time and gets the right resources to the right locations at the right time.
However, I want you to think about time differently for this assignment. I want you to imagine that you are at Disney World standing in line to ride one of your favorite amusement park rides. The length of the line that you are standing in is long and it is a hot and humid Florida day with the sun beating down on you. To make matters worse, the line isn’t moving much and as a result, you start to become irritable. As time continues and you remain standing in a line that seems to be stagnant, you become even more frustrated and annoyed. Finally, you reach your ceiling and you leave upset and disgruntled.
In the science behind queuing – or waiting in a line – businesses, including Disney have spent a lot of money trying to figure out what the tipping point is for people as they wait in line for something. However, the trend hasn’t caught on in the field of public safety and more specifically, emergency management. Yet, everything we do in public safety has a line associated with it. When you call into 9-1-1, you are placed in a line and your spot is determined by the urgency of the call and how many people are ahead of you in line. The million dollar question for emergency managers is: When is the wait in line too long? We have some examples such as Hurricane Andrew and Katrina where the public, collectively, decided that the wait was too long.
In the field of emergency management we too have customers who are waiting in line, except the line they are waiting in is for lifesaving apparatus to arrive and help them. The length of time people have to wait in line shapes outcomes and can mean the difference between life and death. Which means we should probably spend a little time studying lines and queuing.
For this assignment, I want you to think about the science and psychology of lines, and more specifically queuing which determines your spot in the line and overall wait times and apply this concept to disaster preparedness in an interesting and unique way.
Specifically, we are trying to reduce wait times OR (this is a big or), trick the public that they aren’t waiting in line by using psychology. I hate the word “trick” here but in this context I don’t mean to deceive. I simply mean that we create an environment where the wait in line doesn’t seem like we are waiting at all.
Please remember that the response to an incident is as much psychological as it is physical. For example, if you ask someone how long it took the fire apparatus to arrive at their emergency, they will often greatly overestimate the amount of time it took because when you are dealing with an emergency, seconds feel like hours. This should be factored into our queuing strategy.
Here is a great article to get you started: https://queue-it.com/blog/psychology-of-queuing/
Also, make sure you think about ways to distract people from the fact that they are waiting in a line. The goal is to have them wait but not realize they are waiting.
The Surprise
This is a pretty tough assignment because chances are you are going to have to learn about the science behind queuing and then use this new tool to change the way you approach an old problem.
Task
As a group, write a 10 page paper discussing the role that queuing plays in the preparedness cycle and how we can incorporate it into emergency planning with the overarching goal being to reduce the time it takes for lifesaving resources to arrive. Marry the sciences of psychology and queuing with the emergency preparedness cycle to incorporate these theories and practices into the preparedness program.
Measuring Success
- The paper will discuss all of the components of the preparedness cycle.
- Be sure to define the problem, analyze the problem, and formulate a logical solution based on the preparedness cycle.
- The paper will incorporate the science of queuing into the preparedness cycle to help build a more effective and customer-focused process.
- The paper will use innovative and interesting ideas to marry the science and psychology of queuing into the preparedness program for an emergency management agency. It is important to note that program is used interchangeably with cycle in this context.
- You will use at least three credible sources: the textbook and two additional academic sources and will cite them using APA citations.
- The paper will be at least five pages in length and will be turned in on time.
This is a group assignment, my portions of the assignment is the introductions, Which is to define the problem?
