Situational awareness is more complex than simply noticing what is happening around you. An emergency responder must capture clues and cues in the emergency environment, make sense of the information, and predict what will happen next. In Situational Awareness for Emergency Response, Richard Gasaway establishes the foundation of decision making and the role of situational awareness in high-risk public safety environments. He explains his original research on command decisions and the barriers that challenge a commander's situational awareness, and offers lessons learned and best practices that can assist responders in preventing or overcoming the situational awareness barriers. Situational Awareness for Emergency Response is an ideal resource for incident commanders, line personnel who make high-stress decisions, and students learning to develop and maintain situational awareness.

During natural disasters, disease pandemics, terrorist attacks, and other public health emergencies, the health system must be prepared to accommodate a surge in the number of individuals seeking medical help. For the health community, a primary concern is how to provide care to individuals during such high demand, when the health system's resources are exhausted and there are more patients than the system can accommodate. The IOM's Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events held a workshop June 10-11, 2009, to assess the capability of and tools available to federal, state, and local governments to respond to a medical surge. In addition, participants discussed strategies for the public and private sectors to improve preparedness for such a surge. The workshop brought together leaders in the medical and public health preparedness fields, including policy makers from federal agencies and state and local public health departments; providers from the health care community; and health care and hospital administrators. This document summarizes the workshop.

Enabling Comprehensive Situational Awareness explains how and why an integrated emergency management common operating platform can help save lives and mitigate loss during crises and disasters. A geographic information system (GIS) embedded in this platform is the key tool used by emergency management professionals to analyze extensive spatial data collections, as well as immediate field-level data. This book explains how this platform gives decision makers the overview necessary to coordinate efforts across agencies and jurisdictions and develop collaborative mitigation and recovery plans. An implementation guide for building a GIS in a common operating platform is included.

Researchers are helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security understand whether and how social media might be better leveraged for situational awareness in U.S. Coast Guard response operations.

This book examines the human factors issues associated with the development, testing, and implementation of helmet-mounted display technology in the 21st Century Land Warrior System. Because the framework of analysis is soldier performance with the system in the full range of environments and missions, the book discusses both the military context and the characteristics of the infantry soldiers who will use the system. The major issues covered include the positive and negative effects of such a display on the local and global situation awareness of the individual soldier, an analysis of the visual and psychomotor factors associated with each design feature, design considerations for auditory displays, and physical sources of stress and the implications of the display for affecting the soldier's workload. The book proposes an innovative approach to research and testing based on a three-stage strategy that begins in the laboratory, moves to controlled field studies, and culminates in operational testing.

Social media is a new technology that not only allows for another channel of broadcasting messages to the public, but also allows for two way communication between emergency managers and major stakeholder groups. Increasingly the public is turning to social media technologies to obtain up to date information during emergencies and to share data about the disaster in the form of geo data, text, pictures, video, or a combination of these media. Social media also can allow for greater situational awareness for emergency responders. While social media allows for many opportunities to engage in an effective conversation with stakeholders, it also holds many challenges for emergency managers. The purpose of this course is to provide the participants with best practices including tools, techniques and a basic roadmap to build capabilities in the use of social media technologies in their own emergency management organizations (State, local, Tribal) in order to further their emergency response missions. By the end of this course, participants will be able to: Explain why social media is important for emergency management Describe the major functions and features of common social media sites currently used in emergency management Describe the opportunities and challenges of using social media applications during the 5 phases of emergency management Describe better practices for using social media applications during the 5 phases of emergency management Describe the process for building the capabilities and to sustain the use of social media in an emergency management organization (State, local, tribal, territorial)"