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EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
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فَإِنَّ مَعَ ٱلْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا ٥ إِنَّ مَعَ ٱلْعُسْرِ يُسْرًۭا ٦
"...So verily, with every hardship there is relief. Verily, with every hardship there is relief..."
Surah Ash-Sharh: 94 - Verses: 5–6
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Group URLs: ABOUT >> CLIMATE SCIENCE >> LEGAL ENTITIES
Policy Advisor (Current): Pacific Enterprises International Syndicate (PEIS) USA
Pakistan Lead: AMCO Engineering (AMCO) + Indus Basin Resources (IBR)
Program Joint Venture Lead (Current): Afro Eurasian Coalition (AEC) USA
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AEC-PEIS NAICS Code: 541690 Scientific & Technical Consulting
AEC-PEIS SIC Code: 87420501; PEIS USA FCC FRN #: 0034792853
Program Lead (Current): Mohammad Afzal Mirza, President, AEC LLC
Emergency Management Principles
The Comprehensive Emergency Management principles of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery is a phased disaster life-cycle model used to help ensure preparedness for and response to disasters.
Preparedness encompasses those strategies that the VHA health care system can employ to strengthen the facilities ability to manage the impacts of a disaster.
Examples of preparedness strategies used in VHA healthcare include ensuring facilities are able to accommodate additional patient visits that often accompany an emergency or disaster.
Mitigation encompasses those strategies that the VHA health care system can employ to reduce a potential hazard’s severity and impact before the incident even occurs. In some instances, mitigation measures can even prevent the incident from occurring.
Examples of mitigation strategies used in VHA healthcare include ensuring facilities have back up for power, water, computer, data management and communication systems or that facilities are safe structurally.
Response encompasses strategies required to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs after an incident has occurred. Examples of response strategies used in health care include the establishment of Alternate Care Sites.
Alternate Care Sites are temporary medical facilities established when access to the VA medical clinics is impeded due to incidents or disasters. These sites are a means of providing medical services within an impacted area due to a disaster.
Recovery encompasses those strategies required to assist the impacted community’s return to normalcy as soon after a disaster as possible.
Some examples of recovery strategies include ensuring disrupted health care facilities are able to see patients again or the provision of ongoing behavioral health care as a result of the disaster.
Proactive Risk Mitigation is a Forward-looking Strategy that anticipates potential threats and takes Preemptive Action Methodology to reduce their likelihood and impact.
Unlike a Reactive Approach, which responds to problems after they occur, a proactive one aims to build resilience and prevent issues before they escalate.
Core Strategies for Proactive Risk Mitigation
Risk Identification and Assessment: Systematically and continuously scan both internal and external environments to identify potential risks.
Techniques: Conduct workshops, use SWOT analysis, create risk matrices, and review historical data and industry trends.
Implementation: Evaluate the likelihood and potential impact of each risk, and then prioritize them based on their potential to affect organizational objectives.
Risk Reduction: Implement preventive controls to reduce the probability or impact of a risk occurring.
Preventive Controls: Install firewalls, use data encryption, and implement multi-factor authentication to protect against cyber threats.
Contingency Plans: Develop emergency protocols and disaster recovery plans to minimize damage if a risk materializes.
Risk avoidance: Steer clear of activities or decisions that would expose the organization to an unacceptable level of risk.
Example: A company might decide not to launch a product in a country with high political instability to avoid associated market and operational risks.
Risk Transference: Shift the financial impact of a potential risk to a third party.
Methods: Purchase insurance to cover potential losses or outsource high-risk activities to external specialists.
Risk Acceptance: Acknowledge and accept certain risks, typically those with a low likelihood or impact, where the cost of mitigation outweighs the potential benefits.
Implementation: Formally document the decision to accept a risk, and track it in a risk register.
Steps for Implementation
Successful Proactive Mitigation Plan involves structured, ongoing process.
Cultivate a Risk-aware Culture: Promote a top-down culture where all employees are trained to identify and report potential issues.
Monitor Continuously: Use technology like predictive analytics and AI to track risk indicators in real-time. This helps in spotting new or changing threats.
Develop a Risk Management Plan: Create a detailed plan outlining responsibilities, actions, and timelines for mitigating prioritized risks.
Communicate Clearly: Maintain transparency by regularly communicating risk management activities and findings to stakeholders.
Test and Refine: Routinely test mitigation strategies through drills and simulations and refine them based on evolving data and the business environment.
Examples Across Industries
Healthcare: A hospital implements strict safety protocols, uses technology to prevent medical errors, and establishes infection control measures to preempt clinical risks.
Manufacturing: A company uses sensors and data analytics for predictive maintenance on machinery. By detecting early signs of wear, they can perform repairs before equipment breaks down, reducing downtime.
Technology: A tech company invests in employee cybersecurity training, vulnerability testing, and multi-factor authentication to address potential data breaches.
Financial Services: A financial institution conducts regular stress tests to assess its portfolios under different economic scenarios. This allows them to adjust strategies before major market shifts occur.
Risk Mitigation Strategies
Risk Mitigation Strategies involve anticipating and preventing risks before they occur through regular assessments, planning, and implementing preventative measures, rather than reacting to problems after they happen.
Key Strategies include conducting continuous risk assessments, developing comprehensive risk management frameworks, fostering a top-down risk-aware culture, maintaining a risk register, and integrating mitigation into all phases of a project or operation.
Key Principles
Forward-Thinking Approach:
Focuses on identifying potential risks and vulnerabilities before they escalate into crises.
Prevention Over Reaction:
Takes steps to avoid or minimize risk before a negative event occurs.
Continuous Improvement:
Risk management is an ongoing process of monitoring, reviewing, and adapting strategies.
Culture of Awareness:
Encourages leadership to champion risk management and all employees to be aware of and responsible for risks.
Core Strategies
Regular Risk Assessments:
Consistently evaluate potential risks, identify risk drivers, and assess the probability and impact of risks using tools like heat maps and predictive analytics.
Strategic Risk Mitigation Planning:
Develop tailored plans with preventive measures, such as safety protocols and security audits, to reduce the likelihood and impact of risks.
Risk Register Maintenance:
Keep an updated record of identified risks and their corresponding mitigation strategies.
Integration into Processes:
Embed risk management practices into every phase of a project or business operation, from its inception to completion.
Contingency Planning:
Prepare for potential scenarios where risks may materialize to ensure swift and effective responses when they do occur.
Leveraging Predictive Tools:
Utilize technology like AI-based forecasts, Monte Carlo simulations, and data analytics to assess risks and develop more accurate mitigation plans.
Stakeholder Engagement:
Involve diverse stakeholders in risk dialogues and ensure a top-down commitment from leadership to foster a proactive risk culture.
Limitations of Atmospheric Sounder Data
While Atmospheric Sounders provide crucial data for weather forecasting and cyclone prediction, they do have Several Limitations:
1. Cloud Sensitivity (Infrared Sounders):
Inability to penetrate thick clouds: Infrared radiation is largely blocked by clouds. This is the most significant limitation for infrared sounders like the INSAT-3D/3DR.
This limitation means that sounders struggle to provide temperature and humidity profiles below thick cloud layers, especially in regions of active convection like the eyewall of a tropical cyclone or during periods of heavy rainfall associated with monsoon activity.
Cloud contamination in retrievals: Even in partially cloudy conditions, cloud contamination can affect the accuracy of the retrieved temperature and humidity profiles.
Advanced retrieval algorithms attempt to mitigate this, but it remains a challenge.
Coarse Vertical Resolution:
Broad weighting functions: Sounders measure the integrated radiation from layers of the atmosphere rather than providing precise measurements at specific altitudes.
The vertical resolution is limited by the width of the instrument's weighting functions, meaning it's challenging to resolve sharp changes in temperature and humidity in the vertical, such as near the surface or the top of the boundary layer.
Impact on near-surface data: This is particularly noticeable near the surface, where sounders may exhibit biases (e.g., warmer and more humid readings) compared to more direct measurements like radiosondes.
Challenges with Retrieval Accuracy:
Not entirely independent measurements: The broad nature of the weighting functions leads to overlapping information between spectral channels, meaning the measurements are not entirely independent.
Instability of inverse solutions: Retrieving atmospheric profiles from radiance measurements involves solving an inverse problem, which can be inherently unstable. Small errors in the measured radiances can lead to larger errors in the retrieved temperature and humidity profiles.
Limitations in Capturing Fine-Scale Structures:
Spatial Resolution: While geostationary sounders like INSAT-3D/3DR offer high temporal resolution (frequent measurements), their spatial resolution (e.g., 10 km x 10 km for INSAT sounders) may still be too coarse to fully capture the smaller-scale but intense features within a cyclone, like the eye or eyewall region, which are critical for accurate intensity estimation.
Missing Rapid Changes: Although the high temporal resolution of geostationary sounders is useful, the inherent limitations in vertical and spatial resolution can still make it difficult to resolve the rapid, localized changes in atmospheric structure associated with phenomena like rapid intensification of a cyclone or sudden changes in atmospheric stability leading to Severe Weather.
Complementary tools and mitigation strategies
These limitations highlight why satellite sounder data is used in conjunction with other observation systems, such as:
Microwave Sounders: Microwave radiation can penetrate clouds, making microwave sounders crucial for observing the inner structure of cyclones and conditions under cloudy skies where infrared sounders are blinded. However, microwave sounders often have poorer spatial resolution.
Radiosondes: Weather balloons provide highly detailed vertical profiles but are spatially and temporally sparse.
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Models: Sounder data is assimilated into NWP models, which combine the observations with atmospheric physics to create more complete and consistent analyses and forecasts.
Deep Learning Models: New approaches are being developed to extract more information from sounder and imager data, particularly for cyclone intensity estimation.
By combining the strengths of different Observational Platforms, meteorologists can overcome some of the individual limitations of sounder data and achieve more accurate and comprehensive weather and Climate Monitoring.
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