Tools

Provides planning considerations and guidance documents to assist emergency managers with meeting the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidance and accommodations for people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs in four specific areas:
1) Evacuation/Transportation,
2) Public Information and Notification
3) Sheltering/Mass Care and
4) Whole Community Planning.
Products include: i) Promising Practices & Guidebook for AFN Integration in Emergency Management; ii) Plan Review Support Tool; and iii) EOC AFN Tool Kit.

The Unified Area Coordination Group (UACG), the Forward Operating Base (FOB) and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) have been defined as the building blocks of catastrophic emergency management that enable jurisdictions to accept and organize outside assistance quickly and efficiently. Three tools have been developed: a UACG Playbook, an EOC Primer and a FOB FOG.

Provides a mechanism and dashboard for essential information to flow from the field to the EOC to executive decision makers.

Toolkit provides assistance to the COOP and communications planning process to increase preparedness for an all-hazards response. It is scalable, from a single-site event within one jurisdiction to a large-scale regional emergency. It also provides a template to internally develop a COOP plan and a Request for Proposal (RFP) template for an entity to solicit proposals to develop a COOP plan.

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS RESILIENCY ASSESSMENT TOOL
Provides emergency service facilities with a self-scoring resiliency tool for measuring communications systems and procedures against industry best practices.

EXECUTIVE LEVEL POWER OUTAGE PRIMERS
Provides decision makers with a summary of the key concepts and challenges involved in power restoration.

POWER OUTAGE PERMITS AND REGULATIONS
Details permits and regulations for which exemptions may be required to expedite power restoration.

ROLLING BLACKOUTS GUIDE FOR PUBLIC AGENCIES
Includes guidance and operations-level tools for public agencies to prepare for strategic, rotating power outages.

Guides users through the compilation and organization of essential information to produce a debris response action document. DOZER is a stand-alone software application designed for use either prior to or during a debris mission. Contains guidance for new users along with references to more comprehensive sources of information and assistance.

Includes mission, first steps, key and supporting agencies, plans, and tools for each of the 15 federal Emergency Support Functions (ESFs). Tips for success in performing the EOC's three missions of information management, resource management and consequence management are also included.

WATERWAYS TRANSIT DATABASE MODEL TOOL
Provides emergency managers with a better understanding of the passenger capacity of water-based transportation during an emergency. It allows users to view data on vessels and landings, select passenger origin and destination points and calculate passenger throughput.

BEST PRACTICE TOOLS FOR EVACUATION PLANS
Supports local, state and regional evacuation planning by providing best practices, case studies and actionable tools on using different modes of transportation in evacuation scenarios.

Focuses on the coordination and integration of federal assets following a catastrophic incident. Federal Integration Plans (FIPs) were developed for most regional catastrophic plans through a series of executive level and federal partner facilitated discussions.

Working with local data providers throughout the region, the database catalogs existing geospatial data to support a regional response to a catastrophic event.

Models five scenarios that could impact the region: a 10kT IND detonation, a major hurricane, multiple Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detonations, a biological disease outbreak and an RDD detonation. Lists assumptions and considerations for each hazard and includes summaries for all 30 counties in the region.

COMMUNITY RECOVERY PLAYBOOK
Assists federal, state and local emergency managers, non-profit organizations and other public sector entities involved in community recovery and post-disaster housing to implement Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) eligible programs in an efficient and timely manner.

HOUSING RECOVERY & RAPID REPAIR (H3R)
Focuses on developing an actionable plan for rapid housing repair to help residents return home as quickly as possible following a catastrophic incident. The Program Plan outlines how to enable rapid mobilization of coordinated construction efforts across the region and the Bid Specification helps in procuring appropriately qualified contractors quickly.

PARTICIPATORY URBAN PLANNING
Addresses long-term planning and recovery challenges by promoting effective coordination between the government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), faith-based organizations (FBOs) and the public at large. Includes five steps for the government and the community to work together following a disaster: activate, assess, envision, plan and implement.

URBAN POST DISASTER HOUSING
Includes information on the building and testing of an interim housing prototype based on a shipping container-style modular system in NYC.

Pre-identifies facilities for a JFO to support a catastrophic response. Includes playbooks for six different sites, including a virtual JFO and a soft-sided location, and references logistics requirements and floor plans. Emergency managers can also use the Site Requirements Plan and Facility Checklist to identify additional locations for JFOs.

FIELD OPERATIONS GUIDES
Focus on three specific operations established in the MFM Response System: Scene, Postmortem (Morgue), and Antemortem (Victim Information Centers) operations. Serves as tools to assist medicolegal jurisdictions in the establishment and management of MFM operations by utilizing checklists, flowcharts, and Job Action Sheets.

UNIFIED VICTIM IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM (UVIS)
Uses an internet-enabled database system to facilitate the accurate identification and return of decedents to their legal next of kin (NOK) for appropriate final disposition. UVIS is available to municipalities, counties, states and other governmental agencies without charge, under license from NYC.

REGIONAL CATASTROPHIC ASSESSMENT TEAM (RCAT)
Deploys following a mass fatality incident (MFI) at the request of a local medical examiner/coroner to support the completion of an incident characterization and assessment, determine resource requests, and identify regional assets that are able to support the medicolegal response to the MFI. The team is comprised of specially trained personnel representing various medicolegal jurisdictions in the region.

Pulls out the critical concepts included in the RCPT plans for users to access during an emergency. It is intended to be used either as a large wall chart, printed as a reference guide or used electronically with direct links to PDF versions of the RCPT plans.

SYNDROMIC SURVEILLANCE
The system provides templates and protocols that state and local health departments can use to share information in real-time in order to detect disease outbreaks, gathers data on disease occurrence and communicate situational awareness during a catastrophic health event. A syndromic model that provides synthesized data analyses and visualization to decision makers is also included.

PUBLIC HEALTH VULNERABILITY
Establishes a process for determining exposures to various hazards, the cause of the vulnerability and the location of those at risk, generating hazard-specific vulnerability indicators that help emergency managers allocate resources and prioritize outreach activities. Three tools support the analysis: i) a Risk Assessment tool enabling public health departments to identify and prioritize potential hazards; ii) a Vulnerability Analysis tool that identifies populations vulnerable to specific hazards, and iii) the Decision Support System, a web-based Geographic Information System assisting health departments in locating and connecting with vulnerable populations.

Provides a one-stop-EOC-shop for users to access and navigate RCPT developed plans and tools. Through a mobile device application, users can easily access plans and quick sheets.

Allows businesses rapid entry for critical employees to restricted areas following a disaster to help them mitigate damage and loss. The RCPT built system spans jurisdictional boundaries by providing a commonly accessible web-based portal to authenticate credentials.

Provides guidance for organizing regional partners across the public and private sectors through conference calls.

A shelter management system that tracks shelterees and allows jurisdictions to create staffing assignments using pre-identified staff and facilities. The Sahana Emergency Management System is a free web-based program accessible to jurisdictions across the country. Included in the Whole Product Solution is the software needed to install the program, user-friendly instructions and training that describes how to install and use.

Identifies inherent and emergent risks facing the region, overarching challenges to effective risk management, specific barriers faced by the region and methods to increase risk capacity. Research findings provide a framework for leaders to learn from "near misses" and prioritize risk reduction. The Playbook and Risk Card Deck detail a process for local risk review and tie risk management concepts to national planning scenarios.