How can you improve your contingency plan for civil disturbances?

Your risks might be due to being co-located or closely located to firms and organisations with a higher risk profile than your own. Are you co-located with an Energy firm or one likely to be attacked by eco-activists? Or a firm involved in testing on animals? When considering risk you need to look around and see these external risks and figure them in to your own risk matrix(s).

Risk assessment relating to civil disturbances can often be fluid and evolving. It is often beneficial to include a multitude of internal and external qualified professionals and experts to assist in the assessment of probable triggers for possible and likely events. Due to the increasing use of digital communications and social media, it has become a near necessity to conduct ongoing monitoring for chatter and actionable intelligence. The use of informants can also prove to be ultra valuable. Past incident data can be useful, however, it can be equally deceptive. With the extreme changes seen in recent years regarding individual and dynamic group behavior, it is becoming more prudent to expect the worst-case scenario in most scenarios.

To assess risks of civil disturbances, start by identifying potential scenarios, triggers, and consequences in your area. Utilize a risk matrix to rank likelihood and severity, considering social, economic, political, and environmental factors. Review historical data, current trends, and intelligence sources to anticipate threats and opportunities. This proactive approach helps in developing effective strategies to manage and respond to civil disturbances.

First of all, everyone on the team should be actively involved. The supervisor should assess the risks and take necessary precautions. In my practice, I encountered a mass casualty in a middle of night, during which most of the patients needed emergency surgical care. However, the operation theatres in the emergency block were fully occupied and many patients needed emergency surgery. Being in charge of EM, I assessed the risk and reached out to higher authorities addressing the situation and requesting to open up the operation theatres in other departments. This way we as a team rescued many individuals by giving them timely care.

We being near the Duke Power Plant are a high risk target so unless we move further away are subject to immediate incineration. Thankfully we are moving to Historic West End Charlotte and will hopefully be out of range given a huge attack by another nation.

It’s important to be realistic about the tools you have at your disposal. Before acquiring new tools, ask yourself what they will actually solve. Many organizations get a variety of tools, but fail to utilize them to their full potential. Tools are only effective if you have the personnel to utilize them and those personnel are fully trained and proficient in their use.

Store up your tools but also their required expendable resources (e.g., fuel, batteries, ammo, etc.) So often people and managers make the mistake of staging and preparing a quantity of tools (weapon systems, generators, power tools, etc.) but they do not pre-stage adequate supplies of expendable resources that the tools rely on.

In the second step, review your resources and capabilities to address civil disturbances. Inventory human, material, financial, and informational resources, assessing availability and adequacy. Identify internal and external partners, establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and communication channels. This comprehensive approach ensures effective coordination and utilization of resources for prevention, preparation, and response to civil disturbances.

I'd suggest securing facilities to implement measures to safeguard physical assets and facilities, such as installing security systems and reinforcing entry points.

In my experience, this is a critical component as well. From an incentivisation of the needed and available resources, you have a vantage understanding of readiness or suitability.

In the third step, update procedures and protocols for effective response to civil disturbances. Define objectives, strategies, and tactics for each emergency management phase: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Develop contingency plans, including crowd control, evacuation, shelter, traffic management, and damage assessment. Document procedures in clear formats like checklists, flowcharts, or diagrams to ensure readiness and clarity in decision-making during civil disturbances.

They're always new patterns and training in almost all sectors of life. The most important is in the medical sector. These allow for continuous optimisations of relevant and recent explorations in healthcare that would make a good impact on the patients that we serve. For example in healthcare and first aid, there's a procedure called the ABC and D means of resuscitation for emergency. A for airway, B for breathing, C for circulation and D for defibrillation. Procedures and patterns help to maintain orderliness and to make the professional not skip a particular order which could render the whole procedure inefficient. As such, training, retraining, and specializations are required.

It is a key part of the process following assessing risks and resource availability as well as suitability, it will be important to document or update available procedures or standard operating procedures (SOP) A management system is as strong as documented processes, procedures and ownership. Not dependent on persons as this usually changes.

Provide training on conflict resolution, de-escalation techniques, and evacuation procedures and evacuation routes clearly define the evacuation routes and assembly points. Ensure employees are familiar with these routes and conduct regular evacuation drills. Employee support. Establish mechanisms to support employees emotionally and mentally during and after civil disturbances.

There's something my medical consultants always say. I quote "If a healthcare system or task cannot be done in your absence that means you have failed in the healthcare structure." Training is very mandatory for not just health-related professionals but also paramedics and everyone working in a healthcare setting. This enables swift response in times of emergency and unexpected circumstances in a way that everyone knows how to act, behave or carry out a task and a team to ensure effectiveness. Training and simulations must be done in regular intervals to access skill sets and expertise in different tasks required of your team. This ensures repetition to strengthen expertise in a particular field.

In my experience, training in contingency planning is a game changer. It is of no use developing the procedures and not having a good rollout process to communicate and get people aware of what exactly is to be done. All stakeholders must be captured.

1) EXERCISE your plans! "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything" & exercising plans is essentially "very practical planning". ALL relevant agencies work through the plan w/ a realistic &/or worse-case-scenario, putting everyone on the same sheet, allowing everyone to work out unforseen kinks, & makes the plan feel more "real". 2) Hold post-event "hotwash" mtgs w/ ALL relevant parties, w/ fresh minds, to highlight "lessons learned". It's typical, post-event, to hurry back to usual business, but hotwashes ensure "lessons learned" vs simply "lessons identified". 3) Ride the wave of very-temporary concern w/ *immediate* post-event changes in the org, AND submit for funding to support the changes & appropriate prep for the next event.

Plans must be executed. Making simulations of how to execute your plan is very important. This can help to assess for potential unforeseen circumstances, potential hazards and feasibility of your plan being effective.

Using a formative approach at each stage of the emergency response will enhance a well summative evaluation. It allows the identification of gaps and a quick fix to issues at all stages. This can also be cost effective when closing out reports by avoiding a mop-up exercise on task completion.