What is a routine incident response?
A routine incident response is the set of actions taken at the onset of an emergency to begin the mitigation process. An incident response can include the notification of appropriate parties, internal strategy meetings, and collecting data from personnel on the ground.
Emergency managers all have their own ways of managing an emergency situation – from who to notify and when to notify them, to how and when to deploy resources. While each manager has their routine incident response processes already well-established, there are still ways they can be enhanced with some of the new technology options available. There is no need to completely revamp existing processes (especially if they are working), however, some enhancements can bolster them and increase efficiency when first responders are responding to an incident.
Automated mass notification
Mass notification is a critical component of any routine incident response. Emergency managers must be able to quickly and efficiently alert necessary stakeholders at the onset of an incident. These notifications can serve as an early warning during an incident or can contain valuable information as to how to proceed. Rather than notifying each contact one at a time, repeating the same message over and over, mass notification software can provide emergency managers the ability to send bulk alerts to whole lists of contacts with just the click of a button. Mass notification software also provides the ability to send these emergency notifications via multiple communication methods. This can help better ensure everyone who needs to read these messages as soon as possible has access to them in one way or another. Easy and quick access to emergency notification messages can help increase the efficiency of emergency managers’ routine incident response as well as decrease safety risks to responders and the general public.
Optimized teleconference capabilities
Throughout almost any emergency incident, emergency managers must confer with other authorities such as the local police or health officials. Since it is unlikely these various authorities will ever have cause to be in the same room during the incident, they will often resort to teleconferences to discuss potential next steps. It can easily become difficult to plan and schedule teleconferences and get everyone on the phone at the same time due to everyone’s different roles and responsibilities. It’s near impossible to hold an impromptu, on-the-fly teleconference and have everyone remember to call in on time. Optimizing the teleconference process by implementing software that is able to dial out to the necessary participants will make emergency conference calls more efficient. The software does not require participants to remember to call in at a designated time. A teleconference host can set up the system to call out to those who need to be on the call and manage the conference from an online interface. This way the host can know who exactly is on the line, which will decrease the need for inefficient roll calls.
Incident plan templates
As previously mentioned, all emergency managers have a routine incident response procedure they follow whenever a situation arises. An emergency communication platform can help keep these processes and procedures organized with the ability to create incident plan templates within the platform with step-by-step guidelines as to what needs to be done for incidents of that nature. These templates, once created in the emergency communication platform, can then be launched whenever they are needed and managed through an intuitive online dashboard. Tasks can be marked complete or skipped as needed and a record of the incident response will be maintained in the platform’s logs for analysis after the incident has been mitigated.
SimplyCast can help enhance your routine incident response
Again, a complete revamp of all processes used in a routine incident response is not necessary, or advisable. What emergency managers need to consider though, is whether these processes can be enhanced to make incident responses more efficient and possibly even safer for everyone involved. With just a few simple tweaks, a routine incident response plan can be optimized and emergency managers can ensure the mitigation of the incident is as smooth as possible. More data is also collected as a result, that can be reviewed and analyzed once the emergency has been dealt with. SimplyCast can help with these enhancements with our selection of emergency management and communication tools. Use our Alerts tool to send mass notifications; our Instant Teleconference tool to begin an on-the-fly teleconference; and our Command Hub and Event modules to create, launch, and manage your incident response plans. If you would like more information about any of these tools or how SimplyCast can help enhance your routine incident response plans, contact us today!
