Pre-incident development of plans, procedures, and CONOPS to guide chemical response activities, and their testing via exercises, will work to ensure an appropriately coordinated and targeted response when a chemical incident occurs. Robust plans, procedures, and CONOPS will include consideration of:
- Existing hazardous materials release consequence management plan
- Decision-making environment faced by the first-responder community
- Essential elements of information (EEI) needed by first responders, transcribed into customized decision matrices for their use
- Operational and tactical materials that support decision-making analyses, and the provision of such tools, perhaps as decision matrices, to help first responders collect EEIs and make decisions
- Decision matrices that inform the determination of appropriate decontamination processes and a detailed personnel decontamination plan with both rapid and alternative decontamination processes
- Innovative methods to determine appropriate protective actions both in the immediate vicinity of and outside the chemical incident area
- A mind set of “an incident within an incident” that works towards developing alternative and continuity of operations plans