Emergency response planning requires a “whole community” concept of operations (CONOPS) that reflects the collected work of the stakeholder working groups and is coordinated with local elected leadership. A CONOPS that incorporates the input and resources of all essential elements of the response system allows for a coordinated, swift response, which is especially crucial during the early window of opportunity when most of a chemical incident’s outcome is determined.
A community wide-CONOPS should be built that allows the community to assess its own level of preparedness and proficiency for each stage of response and recovery, pinpointing exactly where strengths and deficiencies lie. Planners can compare their level of preparedness against their community-specific chemical risk assessment (based on local threats and vulnerabilities) to align their current and planned capabilities with their greatest risks.