1st Edition

Catastrophic Impact and Loss The Capstone of Impact Assessment

By Kevin D. Burton Copyright 2013
    348 Pages 51 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    The author’s previous work, Managing Emerging Risk: The Capstone of Preparedness considered the notion of risk and what constitutes risk assessment. It presented scenarios to introduce readers to areas of critical thinking around probability and possibility. Six months after the book’s publication, many of the scenarios came true, and other, more menacing risks emerged. Catastrophic Impact and Loss: The Capstone of Impact Assessment is the second stone to be laid in a path toward a more mindful practice of emergency management, focusing on the impacts caused by risk and offering a complete approach to measure and manage them.

    Providing a true understanding of what it is to be "in harm’s way," this essential book details the devastation and effects that both public and private enterprise must be prepared for in the event of a catastrophe. The book examines:

    • Impact assessment as an essential piece of information and the fundamental flaws that hinder the process
    • The development of the digital age and postmodernism and the five guiding principles of postmodern impact assessments
    • How to establish an impact horizon and effect a clear scope statement that includes all in-scope and out-of-scope assets and locations
    • Problems that occur when we fail to create impact assessments that align with internal organizational values, federal and state laws, or industry regulations—and how to use the guiding principles to address these problems
    • Methods for developing solid analytical models for impact assessment—exacting logical, relevant, and clear language and taxonomies
    • How to address overrides and deviations based on expert opinion, cultural needs, and the application of common sense
    • Key challenges in postmodern business impact assessment and how we can best meet those challenges by understanding the concept of the uncanny valley

    Readers who master the principles in this book will better understand the link between the potential damage of an event and how information informs every decision to prepare for, respond to, mitigate, and recover.

    The Postmodern Impact Assessment and Problems of the Mind
    Overview: Risk and Impacts
    Why Risk Assessments and Impact Assessments Are Different
    Approaching the Impact Assessment
    The Evolution of Impacts
    Susie’s Lemonade Stand
    A Fundamental Flaw
    A Larger Problem
    Reconsidering the Impact Analysis and Problems of the Mind
    Objects and Critical Thinking: Apple, Cabinets of Curiosity, and a Dark Nostalgia
    Objects in the Digital Age
    Objects in Japan Today: A Different Worldview
    Objects in the Age of Enlightenment
    Applying Seba’s Curiosities to Impact Assessments
    A Dark Nostalgia
    Five Guiding Principles for Postmodern Impact Assessments
    Overview: A Fundamental Flaw and the Five Guiding Principles
    Looking Deeper at the Evolution of Impacts
    The BP Oil Spill of 2010: A Postmodern Failure
    Stakeholders in an Impact Assessment
    Five Guiding Principles for Postmodern Impact Assessments
    Understanding the Second Phase in an Emergency Management Program: Conducting a Potential Impact Assessment
    The Second Phase—Five Guiding Principles for Postmodern Impact Assessments
    Summary of the Five Principles of Potential Impacts Analysis
    Revisiting: Postmodernism, Revolution, and the Public Sector
    The First Principle: Establish the Impact Horizon
    Overview: A Fundamental Flaw and the Impact Horizon
    Taking a Wide-Angle View of Potential Impacts
    Impacts and Criticality
    The Impact Horizon and Public Perception
    The Amazon Cloud Computing Outage of 2011
    The Importance of Stakeholders and Establishing the Impact Horizon
    The Business Continuity Perspective
    The Emergency Management Perspective
    The Counterterrorism Perspective
    The Public/Private Impact Horizon—Mixed Impacts from the 2008 Financial Crisis
    Delivering the Impact Horizon
    The Second Principle: Align Impact Measures to Core Values
    Overview: An Underlying Problem and the Alignment to Core Values
    Postmodern Culture and the Importance of Messaging from the Core during a Crisis
    Hurricane Katrina, August 2005: Off Message and Off Mission
    The Joplin, Missouri, Tornado of 2011: Off Message and Off Mission
    The Oslo Terror Attacks: On Message and On Mission
    In the Private Sector—Core Values and Measurable Impacts
    Delivering Alignment to Core Values
    Why the Second Principle Matters
    The Third Principle: Consider and Align National and State Laws and Industry Regulations
    Overview: Addressing Underlying Problems with Federal and State Laws and Industry Regulation
    The Third Principle and the Private Sector
    Standards and Regulations
    In the Business Arena
    In Healthcare
    New Orleans, August 23, 2005—Katrina
    Know the Terrain
    HIPAA 5010
    NCPDP
    The Dodd-Frank Act
    Deliverables in Compliance with the Third Principle
    Postmodern Culture: Legal Challenges and the Regulatory Climate
    About Posse Comitatus
    Why the Third Principle Matters
    Taking a Second Look at the Third Principle
    Overview
    Hurricane Irene, 2011: A Case Study in Legal Action and Regulatory Response
    Hurricane Irene—On Message
    The Tale of Two Hurricanes—A Critical Comparison
    The Backdrop—A Nation in Conflict over Freedom and Safety
    Applying Resources to Irene Based on Potential Impacts While Following the Third Principle
    A Thorny Problem
    A Low-Profile, Highly Tactical Response
    Negative Public Perception
    Changes in the Military Structure
    In Summary: Irene and Other Impacts
    The Fourth Principle: Apply Rigorous Data
    Overview: Applying the Second and Third Principles and Creating a Range of Criticality Values Based on a Logical Order and a Common Taxonomy
    The Impact Assessment as a Business Case
    Establishing Ranges of Criticality Values Using Logic and the Weighted Scores
    Getting Started with Data Normalization in the Weighted Criticality Score Values
    The Range of Criticality Score Values and the Placement of Objects in the Range
    Create a Range of Criticality
    Apply the Weighted Score to Individual Objects
    Applying Common Logic
    Core Objects and Metadata
    Applying a Common Taxonomy
    A Proposed Taxonomy Framework
    Using Big Data to Create Ranges of Criticality—A Better Approach
    Generating the Weighted Score and Ranges of Criticality with Big Data
    The Set of Objects as Big Data
    What Is an Object, and How to Determine Criticality Based on the Conjunction of Expert Interviews and Big Data
    Back to the Weighted Score and the Rigorous Application of Data
    Creating a Range of Criticality Based on Big Data
    The Fifth Principle: Document Deviations and Overrides
    Overview: Documented Deviations and Overrides
    Why Deviations and Overrides Occur
    Personal Biases
    Expert Opinion
    Cultural Issues
    International Law
    Cultural Perspectives: India
    Cultural Perspectives: Japan
    Cultural Perspectives: Israel
    International Finance
    Into the Uncanny Valley
    Overview: Potential Impact Assessments and Realism
    A Larger Problem
    Realism
    The Clear Choice during Turbulent Times
    The Choice
    The Uncanny Valley
    Studies in the Uncanny Valley
    The Otaku’s Curation of the Uncanny
    The 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake
    The Unexpected Impact—A Sea of Debris
    Insurrections and Earthquakes
    The Ethical Choices We Must Make
    Shepherding the Organization through the Uncanny Valley
    Index

    Biography

    Kevin D. Burton has been an active practitioner of the business continuity and disaster recovery disciplines since 1994. As a senior consultant at one of the "big two" disaster recovery consultancies, he had the responsibility of servicing the unique needs of e-businesses and highly mature n-tiered application architecture frameworks in the late 1990s. During this period, his clients included May Company Stores, Cattelus Corporation, Sun America Financial, Homestore.com, Dole Foods, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and PeopleSoft.

    "The methodologies offered in this book are sound concepts based upon fundamental risk management principles expanded to take into account the evolving global interdependences of the digital age."
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