From Main Street to Mumbai, Managing Emerging Risk: The Capstone of Preparedness considers the new global drivers behind threats and hazards facing all those tasked with protecting the public and private sector. The text delves into the global mindset of public and private sector emergency managers and presents a new risk landscape vastly different from the one existing ten years ago.
The book begins by presenting a series of fictitious scenarios each resulting in mass destruction and fatalities. These are each followed by actual news stories that support the scenarios and demonstrate that the proposed events—seemingly unthinkable—have the potential to occur. Next, the author identifies two drivers in the practice of emergency management and general preparedness today that constitute our view of the future and the new face of risk. The first is the Disaster Halo Effect—the idea that modern threats exhibit more than one event. The second is the worldview of our nation as a Market State focused on the trading of goods, services, and ideas among the nation-states. The book also reviews the history of preparedness and discusses its relationship with large-scale threats, establishing that hindsight bias has hurt our ability to plan and respond to the unexpected.
The chapters that follow explore what is needed to better cultivate, design, develop, and operate emerging management and preparedness thinking in the current environment. Each chapter begins with key terms and objectives and ends with thought-provoking questions. Introducing a new paradigm of thought that takes into account the chief influencers of global threats, the book arms emergency and business operations managers with the ammo needed to successfully confront emerging threats in the 21st century.
Imagine This
About the Scenarios
The Phoenix Rave Massacre
The Saint Louis Earthquake Scenario
Going Green, Ecoterrorist, and a First Strike Advantage
The Narco-Jihad Strike
The New Face of Risk and the Market State
Overview: The New Face of Risk and the Market State
The History of Preparedness
Today’s Emergency Management Stakeholders
The First Event Scenario and Disaster Halo Effect
The Rise of the Market State
Emergency Management and the Market State
Scenario Planning, Strategy, and Risk Assessments for an Unknown Future
Overview: The Market State Introduces a New Set of Scenarios
Poor Scenario Planning as the Root Cause of Poor Emergency Response
Scenario Planning and The First Event
Various Schools of Thought for Scenario Planning
The Importance of Strategy, Limitations, and Latitudes
The Location-Based Risk Assessment
Sources of Data for First Event Scenarios
Overview: Sources for Valid First Event Scenarios and Location-Based Risk Assessments
The New Madrid Fault-A First Event Scenario?
U.S. Data Sources for First Event Scenarios and Location-Based Risk Assessments
What Computers Can, and Cannot, Tell Us
User Bias and Power Users
Classified Means Not Actionable: If Not Shared Among the Right Agencies
Probability, Possibility, and Risk
All Source Analysis and Storytelling
Tracking Memes: Data Trends and the Diffusion of Innovation
What is a Meme?
Memes in Action: The Beslan Massacre
Complex Systems: Why Rich Data Sets and Novelty Require Trending and Memes
Mastering Memes
Terrorists and Memes: Complex Systems and the 15% Rule
Fusion Centers Do Not Make Memes: Fusion People Do
Mastering Memes: A Method for All-Source Analysis
Grouping Ideas, Tactics, and Ideologies: Categorizing Memes to Tell the Story
Grouping With Visualization
Coolhunters and Pattern Recognition
From Dots and Patterns to Believable Stories
Coolhunters and Early Adopters
Pattern Recognition—The Pros in Action
In Real Life: The Boxing Day Tsunami and Haiti
Putting the Market State to Use, Application, Practice, and Understanding
Amplifying Pattern Recognition
Link and Thin Slice
Areas of Dominant Influence (ADI) and Emerging Markets
Copycats, Reverse Engineering, Swarm Effects, and Kiddie Tactics
New Risk, Reasoned
A New World, New Risks
Tracking Memes: Data Trends and the Diffusion of Innovation
Translating Memes and Diffusion
Stakeholders in Diffusion
The Show and Tell of Diffusion
Telling the Story
Engaging in a New State of Practice
Overview: The New Face of Emergency Management Practitioners
The Emergency Management Lifestyle
The Personal Traits and Characteristics of Tomorrow’s Emergency Manager
Brand of Self
The New Professional Practices of the Market State World
Index
Biography
Kevin D. Burton
