Treating the community’s entire emergency response as a system of systems will help community decision-makers understand the interdependency of community relationships, resources, and components for a successful response. To mount the most effective response to a chemical incident, communities need to understand the essential components of the overarching emergency response system and their priority interdependencies. Further, communities need to understand that the emergency response system includes a variety of local stakeholders, including the traditional emergency responders and hospitals; other groups with HazMat response capabilities; non-traditional private sector and non-profit disaster relief and assistance organizations such as Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOADs); and related out-of-area assets, including EMAC and state and federal assets. A systems engineering approach will help avoid over-estimating resources trained, equipped, and available (for example, when emergency medical services (EMS) workers are also volunteer firefighters), and identify the potential for cascading failures. It will also help identify capability gaps that are essential to understand when planning for a chemical incident.
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