Facing multiple crises at once, how do you prioritize allocating limited personnel resources effectively?

From a former military policeman’s perspective, emergency management begins with a meticulous assessment of risks associated with each crisis. This assessment prioritizes the allocation of personnel based on evaluating potential impacts on human life, property, and the environment. This risk assessment process is dynamic and necessitates continuous re-evaluation as situations evolve and new information emerges. The objective is to establish a clear hierarchy of needs that guides the deployment of resources to mitigate the most severe consequences first. This structured approach ensures that military units are prepared to respond effectively and efficiently to emergencies, minimizing harm and maximizing support where it is most critical.

Assessing risk associated in each emergency crisis in allocating personnel resources is the most critical step. In any emergency crisis, primarily focus on what it’s damaging right from living life to property and environment. It should be considered that what extent it is damaging to your resources. Aim is to train team in saving most valuable assets first, the most important thing where to be needed most that should be enlisted properly.

Always keep your critical and single points of failure in mind. What are your priorities no matter what kind of emergency you're facing? Triage the emergencies from that point of view. Fire and flooding both require evacuation, focus on the most resource intensive areas first and line up resources to achieve your goals. Keep in mind that in some cases the less threatening emergencies may have to be "ignored" until the primary ones are dealt with.

1. Assessment of Crises: Evaluate the severity and urgency of each crisis based on patient safety and immediate needs. 2. Triage Approach: Utilize a triage system to categorize crises based on acuity levels (e.g., life-threatening, urgent, non-urgent). 3. Resource Allocation: Allocate personnel based on the criticality of each crisis. Assign more staff to life-threatening situations requiring immediate intervention. 4. Team Collaboration: Communicate clearly with the team about priorities, ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities during each crisis. 5. Flexibility and Adaptability: Remain flexible to adapt resources as the situation evolves. Reassess priorities based on changing conditions and emerging needs.

Time is your most precious resource. Manage it well. If a particular response is going to take too long, or doesn't give you a wide enough margin for error it may not be the right one, even if it's an established best practice. You may be better off going with a "quick and dirty" solution over a time intensive approach.

Autonomy and trust are key when deploying teams. One of the things that makes the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard so effective is the amount of trust they put in their enlisted personnel and junior officers. That trust means their personnel have the freedom make decisions and act autonomously as needed without being micromanaged from an operations center. That trust has to be built on solid comms and regular, practical, training sessions.

Firefighters worked this out a long time ago with the Incident Command System. It was so effective U.S. DHS has adopted and expanded it. It is an excellent structure for coordinating between government agencies across the board at every level. Bottom line, communication is key, as is knowing who needs what information. Operation info or resource "dashboards" that can be put on a main display in an Emergency Operation Center go a long way to help with this. Its faster to look up at a big screen to get critical info than to track down a subject matter expert that may already be busy.

Complacency kills. No matter how predictable an emergency event might be, there is always the potential for a surprise. This is even more likely with multi-event emergencies. Individual incidents can interact in unpredictable ways that aren't covered by established action plans. Delegating personnel to keep an eye individual events and warning thresholds frees up decision makers to monitor the broader picture. Emergency Operation personnel need to remain in "mission mode" until stand down orders have been given.

It's also crucial to ensure that once the immediacy of the crisis has passed, the knowledge gained from the specific event is not lost to time or memory. It is essential to document as soon as possible what the participants believe either helped or harmed operations and to document these discussions for further review.