Dealing with emergencies, whether foreseen or unforeseen, requires a flexible and adaptive approach. This doctrine, known as Integrated Emergency Management (IEM), is underpinned by five key activities:
- Assessment
- Prevention
- Preparation
- Response
- Recovery
The RRP RPA specifically addresses the assessment and preparation activities of IEM.
Assessment is a fundamental component of risk management as it is important that responders and resilience partners have a realistic and common understanding of the risks that they should prepare for. Adopting robust risk assessment, utilising key products such as the UK National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) and the Scottish Risk Assessment (SRA), ensures that planning is based on a sound foundation.
Preparation should take an ‘all-risks approach’ concentrating on preparing for consequences rather than causes, and so allow a process of generic planning which can be adapted readily to fit to a wide range of issues (including new or novel issues) around response and recovery.