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The word 'crisis' is usually defined along the lines of "an unexpected and sudden event with the potential of major negative consequences".
The event must be unplanned and unforeseen and must happen at the instant. Climate change and the rise of sea water level are no crises because the onset and occurrence are both foreseen and evolutive. They are not flash events.
To be a crisis, the impact of the event must also be potentially negative. Winning with the lottery is also an unexpected and sudden event, but can hardly be seen as a crisis.
The word 'emergency' refers in common literature to a crisis in the "physical sphere", like a flooding, terrorist threat, industrial accident or an infectious disease.
These are also the types of crisis which usually involve the commitment of what are the traditional emergency services: fire & rescue, medical, police, transport, hazmat operations, transmissions, and other logistical operations.
Crisis & Emergency Management aims to embed the process - sometimes also called the art - of tacking an emergency, in a holistic management doctrine, involving risk assessment, avoidance strategies, emergency planning, training, exercises, the actual operational management of an emergency situation and the management of lessons learned.
Although terminology differs, emergency management is commonly subdivided into four phases which form the Emergency Management Cycle:
- Reduction
- Readiness
- Response
- Recovery
The core activities of CEMAC are described in activity group below, and can be found linked to this Emergency Management Cycle in the [ Products & Services ] section. |
