Question

Discuss FEMA’s Incident Command System (ICS), its effectiveness, weakness, limitations and operation with federal and/or state and/or local government responses. Discuss the command and control powers. Also address its impact on the private sector.

Answer 1

Incident management system is a type of management system which is designed to enable effective and efficient domestic incident management by integrating a combination of facilities, personnel, procedures operating within a common organisational structure. It normally facilitates activities in five functional areas command, operation, planning, logistics, intelligence and investigation and finance and administration. It's effectiveness can be explained by following points :-

1 .It uses a management system designed for small & large emergency or non emergency situation including planned events, natural disaster and act of terrorism or war.

2 .Integrated combination of facilities, equipment, personnel, procedure & communications operating within a common organizational structure using national best practices.

3. Unifies activities inseveral areas like command, operations, planning, logistics, intelligence & investigation and finance & administration.

Weakness or limitation on incident command system are :-

1 It adheres to fixed procedure which somewhere restrict the ability to think out of the box and thus restrict creativity.

2. All the disasters and their frequency is not same so restricting yourself on some preestablished procedure may not work in every kind of situation.

3 . It may not work in an urban environment with it's complex interlocking systems and thus I may fail to be an effective tool for management of exponentially expanding event.

4. It's processes are too linear, hierarchical and cumbersome for large scale evolving event.

As far as its operation is concerned with federal or state or local government is concerned it is parti ent here to note that ICS may be used for all sort of emergencies and has been successfully employed by multiple response disciplines and it is used at all levels of government it may be federal, state or local government to organize field level operations and their reposes are jointly interlinked with the governmental responses.

Incident command system operates or starts from the top down. Command provides leadership and establishes the objectives and is responsible for managing the incident.

It has a wide impact on private sector like

1 .coordination with private sector to identify their needs, concern and issues.

2. Development of strategy and action plan to engage with private sector.

3. Dissemination of information relevant to the private sector.