Catastrophic Disaster Planning
IEM's innovative exercise-driven planning process created for "Hurricane Pam" is today's standard for catastrophic disaster planning.
Catastrophic disasters—natural or man-made—demand extraordinary efforts from everyone involved in response and recovery, including Federal, state, and local governments; community groups; faith-based organizations; private industry; and individual citizens.
What they say about "Pam":
"Hurricane Pam 2004 was more than an exercise. It was a unique planning endeavor that resulted in functional plans that were considered for and actually put to use in real-life situations before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina."
"Most exercise participants agreed that many of the plans were useful even though they were not final. Though they needed some cleaning up, the resulting drafts were 'fightable,' that is, detailed enough to be implemented and to guide response and recovery operations."
—Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared," Report from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, May 2006
"Hurricane Pam" is planning benchmark.
Effective response to and recovery from such events requires planning that is customized to the specific threat, fully integrated, and carefully coordinated among all stakeholders. IEM's approach to catastrophic disaster planning was introduced in the 2004 "Hurricane Pam" catastrophic hurricane planning project for Southeast Louisiana.
Scenario-based for actionable plans.
Typically, a plan is developed and then exercised to identify areas for improvement. "Hurricane Pam" was a planning workshop, an innovative concept that combined planning with an exercise scenario.
Scenario-based catastrophic planning brings together planners and operational personnel from multiple jurisdictions, agencies, and organizations to draft actionable plans and plan updates on the spot. Using science-based modeling and subject-matter experts—emergency planners, scientists, exercise specialists, and human behavioral specialists, and others—IEM creates a plausible catastrophic scenario, including consequences and challenges for response. The exercise component of this process provides all attendees with a chance to immediately test parts of the plans, even as they are being developed and refined.
