Assignment:
This final Assignment is designed to highlight many of the issues addressed throughout the course. Keep in mind that disaster planning is as often about building consensus, predicting future impacts, and empathy as it is about project management, budgets, and logistics. All are essential aspects of modern emergency management.
Prepare a 6 to 8 slide PowerPoint presentation on a disaster recovery plan for Planville, a suburban city with a population of approximately 30,000 residents.
Planville has a small industrial park and a community hospital. The community has a significant transportation infrastructure in and around it, including an interstate highway, several state highways, and a rail system that transports passengers and freight. The city was founded about 200 years ago along the Planville River, which has a history of flooding during the springtime, sometimes causing significant damage to Planville and the surrounding area.
Planville has a vibrant downtown area with a thriving arts scene and many bars and restaurants that draw visitors in the evenings and on weekends. There is also an active business district with small shops, as well as several banks and gas stations.
The Planville Fire Department has a full-time staff of 60, with a normal daily staffing level of 15. KFD also provides EMS for the city. The Planville Police Department and the Department of Public Works are staffed in a similar fashion.
You are the full-time emergency manager and you are assigned by the mayor to design a disaster recovery plan. The Planville Disaster Recovery Plan should consider the role of disaster recovery in the context of the comprehensive emergency management cycle. Understanding the frameworks of disaster recovery, the process-driven approach, and how to access operational and financial resources in the short and long term will be important in this Assignment, but having an appreciation for the social impacts a community sustains during disaster recovery is vital too. Further, rebuilding with an eye toward sustainability has become integral to creating resilient communities as the scope of disasters changes.
The Planville Disaster Recovery Plan presentation should incorporate the following elements:
- Use the technical language of disaster recovery
- Include both natural and technological hazards
- Include the components of both short- and long-term disaster recovery operations
- Describe how the recovery phase fits into the comprehensive emergency management process
- Make connections between disaster recovery and the other phases of emergency management
- Make recommendations for improving Planville's disaster resilience using a holistic approach and eye toward sustainability
- Make specific recommendations on mitigation projects (both structural and nonstructural)
- Factor in the roles and responsibilities of local, state, and federal governments in recovery operations
- Distinguish between the roles and responsibilities of private sector individuals, organizations, and insurance providers in recovery operations
- Identify potential sources for financing recovery
- Describe how rebuilding with an eye toward sustainability has become integral to creating resilient communities
The PowerPoint presentation should have the following characteristics:
- Designed with a live audience in mind in order to inform your viewers about the topic
- Bullets for your main points
- Pictures to support your presentation where applicable
- Speaker notes to fully explain what is being discussed in the slide bullet points as though you are presenting to an audience
- A title slide and a references slide
- Research from at least two reliable sources to support the main message, including graphics. Discuss how you evaluated the credibility of the sources used.
- Information from course readings, the course materials, or other library sources incorporated to support your discussion. Properly cite all sources of information by including in-text citations and a list of references.
- Research and visuals cited in APA citation format, both in-text and on a References slide. You need to quote material taken directly from a source. The same standards for documenting sources that apply to an essay also apply to a presentation. Go to Course Home>Academic Tools> APA Style Central for a digital library of APA style quick guides and tutorials to refine your writing.
- Signal phrases are useful in presentations. They help make your writing flow with one idea clearly leading to the next. It is a good practice to use signal words and phrases instead of just inserting quotations abruptly and separately. For more details on signal phrases, refer to the Writing Center.