10TH INTERNATIONAL COMMAND AND CONTROL RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM THE FUTURE OF C2 Development of Metrics to Evaluate Effectiveness of Emergency Response Operations

Introduction The overall effectiveness of an emergency response to a large scale disaster is a difficult entity to measure. Every disaster is different and every response is different. In fact, similar events leave totally different results in their aftermath. For example a category two hurricane might inflict much more damage than a category four, depending on the location of impact. Additionally, the emergency response to a flood in rural Mississippi will be totally different than the emergency response to a flood in New Orleans, LA. To effectively measure the overall response to any of these events, proper metrics must be used and interpreted appropriately. This paper will focus primarily on a macro-scale evaluation of the initial assessment and assistance given directly following a natural or manmade disaster. The long term effects and rebuilding of an affected area will not be considered. Furthermore this paper will be constrained to looking at a high level view of assessment rather than at specific methods used to achieve selected goals. There are many theories and arguments as to what is the proper or optimal way to respond to an artificial or natural disaster. Should the police help with medical response; should firemen help maintain order; who is in charge and what responsibilities does everyone have? While there are many different methods used, it is difficult to determine which ones are better than others. There are also many different thoughts on where to concentrate efforts and how to use them. While many theories exist, it is very difficult to validate the efficacy of any method due to the inherent irregularity of disasters. No two disasters are alike and thus it is hard to determine whether one method is better than another. Lastly, an actual disaster is not a place to " test " a new idea on response. During an actual disaster, the response must not be a test of new ideas with inherent confusion, but rather a well tested and trained response. It is also very cost prohibitive to create an artificial disaster for training and testing. Even a single building collapse scenario involves hundreds of thousands (if not more) of dollars to merely set up the exercise. Often test scenarios like this can only be done only once to test one theory or idea. While the hands-on training for involved personnel is invaluable in a real exercise, the ability to test different methods, …