PLAN PRE-TESTING IN DISASTER

MANAGEMENT
Why the disaster recovery plan should be
tested?
It is important to test your BCP and DRP to
uncover any weaknesses. Disaster
recovery testing allows you to identify
potential errors and issues and develop
solutions so that in a real disaster, your
business will be able to reestablish critical
operations.18 Aug 2020

Emergency Preparedness Testing

 An organisation can’t prevent a
disaster from occurring, but it can
ensure that it is well prepared.
 Integral to its success in doing so are
stringent procedures, training of key
staff to understand their roles, and
reinforcing their knowledge of how to
deal effectively with any incident likely to
 cause significant harm to the site and/or
its people.
 An organisation should review and
test its Emergency Preparedness Plan
regularly (i.e. at least once a year, or
whenever there are changes within the
organisation that could compromise the
effectiveness of the plan), to evaluate its
effectiveness and to ensure that the
organisation can mitigate the effects of a
major incident.
What are the benefits?
 Emergency Preparedness Testing
assesses and reports on the
effectiveness of the emergency
response by the site management team.
 Capacity building:- Enhancement of
expertise in disaster preparedness and
response.
 It is vital to ensure procedures
(Protocols) are in place to prevent,
prepare for and mitigate the effects of
 major incidents, and to ensure all site
personnel are effectively trained and
aware of their responsibilities in relation
to such potential incidents.
 The scenario and subsequent
assessment bring together those pre-
existing
conditions that are involved in an
emergency situation, allowing the
emergency
response team and their responses to
be observed under controlled
conditions.
3/11/2021 The testing process is also
designed:-
 To highlight any deficiencies, gaps or
aspects of the plan which do not work
in practice.
 To make recommendations for
corrective action.
  Identifying those responsible for
addressing any weaknesses that might
prevent the plan working in the event of
an actual emergency.
Objectives
 Carrying out emergency preparedness
testing ensures peace of mind, and
reduces the potential impacts of
emergencies – reducing risk, ensuring
business continuity, and property and
life safety.
 To make improvements to the plan will
help to reduce risk, ensure safety and
compliance and enhance business
continuity.
 Ensure that legal obligations to prevent
and mitigate the effects of a major
incident are met.

The objective of the emergency
scenario is to test, through simulation,
 the effectiveness of crisis
management and other arrangements
to deal with an incident likely to cause
significant harm to the site and/or its
people, and to provide
recommendations after the event for
corrective action.
 Emergency planning consultant(s)
attend site to test the level of emergency

preparedness, focusing on:

 emergency planning
arrangements,
 initial response to a crisis or
disaster,
 incident control and containment,
 evacuation,
 escape or rescue,
 protection of life,
 protection of the environment and
 protection of property.
 The Emergency Preparedness Test shall
consider how the site and its team:
 plans for such an event
 provides essential resources to deal with
such an event
 trains its staff to deal with such an event
 organises its resources to deal with such an
event
 communicates internally and externally
during an event
 responds to an event in respect of
timeliness and appropriateness
 records such an event and the availability of
documentation available to provide a
suitable evidence trail
 performs during such an event in relation
to protecting staff, occupiers and property
 manages any re-instatement following such
an event.
Testing & Exercises in disaster
management
You should conduct testing and exercises to
evaluate the effectiveness of your preparedness
program.
There are many benefits to testing and
exercises:
 Train personnel; clarify roles and
responsibilities
 Reinforce knowledge of procedures,
facilities, systems and equipment
 Improve individual performance as well as

organizational coordination and

communications
 Evaluate policies, plans, procedures and the

knowledge and skills of team members

 Reveal weaknesses and resource gaps

 Comply with local laws, codes and

regulations
 Gain recognition for the emergency
management and business continuity
program
Testing the Plan
 When you hear the word “testing,”
you probably think about a pass/fail
evaluation.
 Testing is necessary to determine
whether or not the various parts of the
preparedness program will work.
Exercises
 Exercising the preparedness
program helps to improve the overall
strength of the preparedness program
and the ability of team members to
perform their roles and to carry out their
responsibilities.
 There are several different types of
exercises that can help you to evaluate
your program and its capability to
protect your employees, facilities,
business operations, and the
environment
All Hazards
Emergency Alerts
Attacks in Public Places
Avalanche
Bioterrorism
Chemical Emergencies
Cybersecurity
Drought
Earthquakes
Explosions
Extreme Heat
Floods
Hazardous Materials Incidents
Home Fires
Household Chemical Emergencies
Hurricanes
Landslides & Debris Flow
Nuclear Explosion
Nuclear Power Plants
Pandemic
Power Outages
Radiological Dispersion Device
Severe Weather
Space Weather
Thunderstorms & Lightning
Tornadoes
Tsunamis
Volcanoes
Wildfires
Winter Weather
Recovering from Disaster

Why Prepare a State Pre-Disaster Recovery Plan?

• Improve public confidence through early, on-going, and consistent communication of
short- and long-term priorities.
• Avoid often-difficult, ad hoc process of post-disaster discovery of new roles, resources.
• Gain support from whole-community partnerships necessary to support individuals,
businesses, and communities.
• Improve stakeholder and disaster survivor involvement after the disaster through a
definition of outreach resources and two-way communication methods the State will
employ.
• Maximize Federal, private sector, and nongovernmental dollars through early and
more defined State funding priorities and post-disaster planning activity.
• Facilitate more rapid and effective access to Federal resources through better
understanding of funding resources and requirements ahead of time.
• Enable State leadership to bring to bear all State capability, and more easily identify
gaps, through a coordination structure and defined roles.
• Better leverage and apply limited State and nongovernment resources when there is
no Federal disaster declaration.
• Maximize opportunities to build resilience and risk reduction into all aspects of
rebuilding.
• Speed identification of local recovery needs and resources and ultimately reduce costs
and disruption that result from chaotic, ad hoc, or inefficient allocation of resources.
• Improve capability of local governments through pre-identification of when and how
the State offers support for local government post-disaster planning, capacity needs,
recovery management, and technical assistance.
• Proactively confront recovery and redevelopment policy choices in the deliberative and
less contentious pre-disaster environment.
• Improve ability to interface with Federal Recovery Support Function (RSF) structure

Discussion Point:
Recovery Core Capabilities
The National Preparedness Goal defines eight Core Capabilities that apply to the
Recovery mission area. The efforts of the whole community—not any one level of
government—are required to build, sustain, and deliver the Core Capabilities.
• Planning – Conduct a systematic process engaging the whole community as
appropriate in the development of executable strategic, operational, and/or tactical
approaches to meet defined objectives.
• Public Information and Warning – Deliver coordinated, prompt, reliable, and actionable
information to the whole community through the use of clear, consistent, accessible,
and culturally and linguistically appropriate methods to effectively relay information
regarding any threat or hazard and, as appropriate, the actions being taken and the
assistance being made available.
• Operational Coordination – Establish and maintain a unified and coordinated
operational structure and process that appropriately integrates all critical stakeholders
and supports the execution of Core Capabilities.
• Economic Recovery – Return economic and business activities (including food and
agriculture) to a healthy state and develop new business and employment opportunities
that result in a sustainable and economically viable community.
• Health and Social Services – Restore and improve health and social services capabilities
and networks to promote the resilience, independence, health (including behavioral
health), and well-being of the whole community.
• Housing – Implement housing solutions that effectively support the needs of the
whole community and contribute to its sustainability and resilience.
• Infrastructure Systems – Stabilize critical infrastructure functions, minimize health and
safety threats, and efficiently restore and revitalize systems and services to support a
viable, resilient community.
• Natural and Cultural Resources – Protect natural and cultural resources and historic
properties through appropriate planning, mitigation, response, and recovery actions to
preserve, conserve, rehabilitate, and restore them consistent with post-disaster
community priorities and best practices and in compliance with appropriate
environmental and historic preservation laws and executive orders.
NATIONAL MITIGATION FRAMEWORK
 The National Mitigation Framework establishes a common platform and forum
for coordinating and addressing how the Nation manages risk through mitigation
capabilities.
 Mitigation reduces the impact of disasters by supporting protection and
prevention activities, easing response, and speeding recovery to create better
prepared and more resilient communities.
 During the recovery planning and coordination process, actions can be taken to
address the resilience of State, tribal, territorial, or local communities.
 The NDRF defines resilience as the ability to adapt to changing conditions, and
withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to emergencies, while
mitigation includes the capabilities necessary to reduce loss of life and property
by lessening the impact of a disaster.
 Consideration should be given to integration of the National Mitigation
Framework and mitigation Core Capabilities into the structure, policies, and roles
developed during the course of building a State recovery plan.
 A recovery plan can contain important elements to operationalize mitigation Core
Capabilities during the recovery period.
MITIGATION CORE CAPABILITIES
The National Preparedness Goal defines seven Core Capabilities that apply to the
Mitigation mission area. The first three are common Core Capabilities, shared with all
mission areas.
• Planning
• Public Information and Warning
• Operational Coordination
• Community Resilience
• Long-Term Vulnerability Reduction
• Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment
• Threats and Hazards Identification

Guiding Principles for implementing Disaster Risk Reduction:

• Effective disaster risk reduction requires community participation.
The involvement of communities in the design and implementation of activities helps to ensure that
they are well tailored to the actual vulnerabilities and to the needs of the affected people. This informed
engagement helps to avoid problems and secondary effects when hazard events occur. Participatory
approaches can more effectively capitalise on existing indigenous capacities. They are usually also more
sensitive to gender, cultural and other context-specific issues that can undermine or empower particular
groups and individuals to take locally based action. The incorporation of local perspectives into decision
and activities also helps to ensure that changes in vulnerability and perception of risk are recognised and
factored into institutional processes, risk assessments, and other programmes and policies.
• States have the primary responsibility for implementing measures to reduce disaster risk.
Disaster risk reduction needs to be an essential part of a state’s investment in sustainable development.
States have the power as well as the responsibility to protect their citizens and their national assets by
reducing the losses from disasters. States, however cannot do the job alone. Effective disaster risk
reduction relies on the efforts of many different stakeholders, including regional and international
organisations, civil society, including volunteers, the private sector, the media and scientific community.
• Disaster risk reduction must be integrated into development activities.
Disasters undermine hard won development gains, destroying lives and livelihoods and trapping many
people in poverty.
• A multi-hazard approach can improve effectiveness.
A particular community is usually exposed to risk from a variety of hazards. The resulting cumulative risk
cannot be tackled effectively if actors plan merely for selected hazardous events. A multi-hazard
approach involves translating and linking knowledge of a full-range of hazards into disaster and risk
management. It will look not only at natural hazards, but also factors including political strategies,
technical analysis, and operational capabilities and public understanding. This approach will ultimately
lead to greater effectiveness and costefficiency.
• Capacity development is a central strategy for reducing risk.
Capacity development is needed to build and maintain the ability of people, organisations and societies
to manage their risks successfully themselves. This requires not only training and specialised technical
assistance, but also the strengthening of capacities of communities and individuals to recognise and
reduce risks in their localities. Decentralise responsibility for disaster risk reduction. Many disaster risk
reduction activities need to be implemented at the provincial, municipal and local levels, as the hazards
faced and the populations exposed are specific to particular geographic areas. It is necessary to
decentralise responsibilities and resources for disaster risk reduction to relevant sub national or local
authorities as appropriate. Decentralisation can also motivate increased local participation along with
improved efficiency and equitable benefits from local services.
• Gender is a core factor in disaster risk and in the reduction of risk.
Gender is a central organising principle in all societies. Differences in gender roles will lead to differing
risk profiles for women and men in a disaster. In all settings- at home, at work or in the neighbourhoods-
gender shapes the capacities and resources of individuals to minimise harm, to adapt to hazards and
respond to disasters. It is evident from past disasters that low-income women and those who are
marginalised due to marital status, physical ability or age, social stigma or caste are especially
disadvantaged. At the grass roots level, on the other hand, women are often well positioned to manage
risk due to their roles as both users and managers of environmental resources, as economic providers,
and as caregivers and community workers. For these reasons it is necessary to identify and use gender
differentiation information, to ensure that risk reduction strategies are correctly targeted at the most
vulnerable and are effectively implemented through the roles of both women and men.
• Public-private partnerships are an important tool for disaster risk reduction.
Public-private partnerships are voluntary joint associations formed to address shared objectives
through collaborative actions. They may involve public organisations such as government agencies,
professional and/or academic institutions and NGOs, together with business organisations such as
companies, industry associations and private foundations. Because the threats from natural hazards
affect both public and private interests alike, private-public partnerships can offer opportunities to
combine resources and expertise and to act jointly to reduce risks and potential losses. They can
therefore improve the resilience of communities.
• Disaster risk reduction needs to be customised to a particular setting.
States vary greatly in their political, socio-economic, cultural, environment, and hazard circumstances.
Measures that succeed in reducing risk in one setting may not work in others. Customising involves
making use of others’ experience, for instance by reviewing the contexts of particular measures and the
nature of good practices and lessons learned, and then tailoring these to implement policies and
activities that are appropriate for the local contexts.

Preparedness and Planning for National Societies

It is very important to identify the key level where management of disaster preparedness
will occur. Preparedness and effective planning at the local level are very important, but
overall strategic development and management are likely to be at the national level in
small and medium size countries, whereas in a large country, the intermediate level
(state, regional, provincial, district) may be the key level at which decision making,
control, coordination and information management will be most effectively carried out.
At the local level
• Establish an information base by determining: 1. What hazards can affect the given
area? 2. Who and what will be most at risk due to the given situation? 3. What are the
main reasons for their vulnerability toward the given hazards? 4. What resources and
capabilities are available for effective response actions during disaster occurrence?
• Identify and implement programs on vulnerability reduction and public education and
training through National Society staff and volunteers working in close contact with the
vulnerable local population in disaster prone areas.
• Consider ways to reduce risks associated with local hazard phenomena. Often these
may be a combination of traditional and modern methods.
• Become familiar with how local people engage in disaster preparedness and then
design ways to support them with their efforts. Do the same with regard to response
preparedness.
• Mobilise and train volunteers for effective response actions.
• Plan for the rapid acquisition of necessary relief supplies and equipment for use in
emergency situation. Designate, stock and maintain warehouses. Investigate options for
the delivery of relief supplies to distant or inaccessible areas.
• Establish reliable and appropriate communication lines between responsible local
authorities and local organisations as well as inside the Headquarters of the National
Society. These communication lines are essential for proper coordination of disaster
response actions. At the intermediate levels
• In large countries, the regional level is the main link between local departments and
National Headquarters. Therefore, it is essential to anticipate how an inability to
communicate between local, regional and national levels (because of damaged systems)
will affect the disaster response.

During a disaster, there may be a situation when officials at the regional and local levels
must act autonomously—apart from national headquarters. In anticipation of these
situations, an agreement concerning independent decisions and control of disaster
preparedness and response should be reached with the national headquarters.
• Relief stocks and equipment must be available (or the system for rapidly procuring
them must be in place) at the regional level in order to give rapid assistance to remote
local areas. • There should be a disaster response plan, which considers local branch
plans. This will help maintain good interactions with the local level and provide the
opportunity to support local departments in case of a disaster.
• The regional level also needs to maintain good communications and coordination with
other regional organisations. This will facilitate coordination of activities in the event of a
disaster. At the national level
• The National Society should develop a disaster profile for the country. This profile
should include a list of past and possible disasters for the country and identify the most
likely hazards, possible risks that may be caused by them, existing vulnerabilities of the
people and communities that are the most likely to be affected by the disaster, and the
capabilities for disaster response. Such information should be based on data gathered
from different sources, including data gathered at local levels of the National Society
and data from other local organisations, government, ministries, and academic
institutions in the country or region.
• The National Society should also consider possible threats from neighbouring
countries, such as epidemics, insects, environmental degradation, contamination, or
refugee movements.
• On the basis of information received and in accordance with their role, the National
Society should prepare its own program of disaster preparedness, which should include
mitigation (risk reduction) and vulnerability reduction strategies, and an assessment of
the capacity of the National Society to respond to disasters.
• Disaster preparedness must be reinforced by information sharing among departments
with similar roles and objectives inside the country and with analogous organisations in
neighbouring countries.
• Disaster preparedness should be considered a link between development and relief
and should be included in other programs of the National Society, such as first aid,
youth programs and health services, since reinforcement of existing structures and
systems is more effective than establishment of new structures. This link should be
reflected in the National Society development plan.
• Training staff and volunteers at the national and local levels should be a priority. Local
departments should receive training/coaching for skills to help them work with the local
population both to develop a program for addressing local vulnerability as well as to
develop their disaster response skills.
• When possible, National Societies should establish food stocks and equipment near
possible disaster sites (or should have procedures in place for rapid procurement). In
addition there should be a national fund for emergency situations as well as a plan for
attracting resources for this fund on an ongoing basis.
• Fundraising activities and the possibility of setting up a disaster emergency fund
should be established at the national level.
• Precise procedures should be established that clarify responsibilities and
decisionmaking authority.
• The National Society should try to establish good relationships with other disaster
preparedness and response organisations and between the local and international
levels.
• The media play an important role in emergency situations. National Societies should
accept the role of the media and assign a designated media contact person who will be
responsible for providing the national and international media with information.
• Disaster preparedness should be rehearsed, possibly through training and simulation
exercises. Connections to the international level It is necessary to establish good
relations with the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies, the
International Committee of the Red Cross and other National Societies within the
region. National societies must be ready to receive international assistance in case of a
disaster. National societies have an important role to play in convincing the population,
media and governments of their countries to help other countries, especially
neighbouring ones, in disaster preparedness and response.