Principles of Risk-Based Decision Making - Assignment Example

1. Risk-based decisions develop around the necessity to formulate choices, either to take or not to take a particular action, or to choose one option from a range of options available. The options available are frequently constrained by technical, social, environmental, business and safety objectives and requirements. Successful risk-based decision making needs a good understanding of these numerous objectives and requirements, their relative significance, and the most effective way to monitor the options and make the best decision (2012). The assumptions upon which decisions are based are often based on established traditional reasoning patterns or the claimed ‘best practice’. Some of the common assumptions frequently employed include: outsourcing will lower costs, dividing work into front-office and back-office tasks will increase efficiency, higher costs will result in higher quality and automated flow of work will lessen errors and raise efficiency (2012). Assumptions are vastly susceptible to group thinking including other cognitive biases. Many assumptions upon which decisions are made are not subject to deep scrutiny as opposed to knowledge which has its foundation on empirical data. Unfortunately, while assumptions are readily available, knowledge is extremely particular to a specific situation and is not readily accessible. Knowledge must be developed directly from the job through controlled experiments (2012). The constraints in decision making are uncontrolled aspects normally acting as bottlenecks. They restrict the risk-based decision making process from achieving its potential with regard to its goals. The constraints against the amount of risks that are allowed are identified, and the rest of the organization restructured around them as the decision is made. Organizations are rated and controlled based on variations on the inventory, operational expense and throughput. The inventory refers to the amount of money invested in buying items which the organization intends to sell while throughput is the pace at which the organization produces money through sales. The operational expense includes all the funds the organization uses to turn the inventory into throughput. Constraints against the amount of risks that are allowed can be ‘broken’ if the throughput capacity is raised to a point where it ceases to be a limited factor. When this point is reached, the new limiting factor is some separate section of the system or an external constraint. Risk tolerance is an important aspect in risk-based decision making. It describes the individual’s or organization’s attitude towards taking risks in the process of making decisions. Risk tolerance considers the tolerable or unacceptable variations from the expected results of the decision. Well informed risk decisions rely on knowledge of the risks associated with the decision and the most effective risk management options (2012). Risk tolerance is a factor that cannot be evaded. A good understanding of risk needs sufficient knowledge of the factors which perpetuate impact, the measures that are in place to manage risk and the assets related to impact including threats against those assets. An individual making a decision will to some extent often apply their personal risk tolerance to a decision. An illustration of a risk-based decision that a private or public sector organization might make using these 5 factors is the sitting or location of a waste disposal facility. This decision is normally made by governments using mechanisms like deed restrictions, zoning, and regulation or in some cases property controls. Many of such risk-based decisions processes involve public opinion. For instance, suppose there’s a proposal that a power facility is located in a low-income neighborhood that already has similar sources of pollutants or power-generating facilities, a straight application of risk-assessment techniques in this situation might make the proponent of the power plant make analyses in order to establish whether the facility would add to surpassing of established risk standards. Matters related to alternative locations would typically be tackled in another section of the analysis, including reasons explaining why the site is preferable and other estimates of optional technologies and their impact on the budget or benefits taken into account (Government Institutes. 2001). 2. Evaluating the progress made towards achieving preparedness to disaster offers the methods to decide where and how to assign supplies and prioritize preparedness. This is normally carried out through exercises and assessment of the occurrence of real world events. Exercises are carried out in order to analyze and validate capabilities and plans. A comprehensive and effective exercise program which incorporates partnership with entire communities is significant in the successful implementation of a preparedness program. By pointing out the strengths and exposing the gaps, exercises assist the preparedness teams’ capacity to authenticate capabilities and calculate progress toward meeting their goals (Wagner, 2008). Formulated and defined exercise programs serve as the fundamental exercise techniques foe evaluating preparedness and estimating the levels of readiness. Additionally, exercise carried out act to appraise and validate the capabilities of agencies, organizations and jurisdictions. For instance, governments experiment their ability to conduct fire and rescue operations or protect facilities while businesses validate their ability to sustain supply chains in the case of emergencies. Security agencies provide guidelines and tools used to design, implement, and evaluate exercises (Molino, 2006). In addition, training, real world events and exercises also present necessary information on evaluating and validating the progress of a community toward realizing its desired capabilities. After action reports and best practices reports from exercises and real world events, remedial action management programs make use of this information to spot and share lessons learned where and when appropriate. The remedial action management program processes aid in validating which capabilities are effectual and identifying the actions to replace, improve, or remove the aspects of capabilities which are found to be ineffective. Exercises are critical in disaster preparedness by allowing the entire community stakeholders to validate and test capabilities and identify both faults in capability and improvement areas (Wagner, 2008). . They unite the whole community in its mitigation, response and recovery efforts. They are efficient, practical cost-effective instruments which help communities practice and refine their collective capabilities to achieve disaster preparedness goals in all mission areas (Molino, 2006). Exercises are categorized into table-top, functional, and full-scale exercises. Exercise programs instigate with a table-top exercise followed by more complex exercises incorporated into the plan. 3. Local plans such as those for resilience and response in all-hazards planning depend of a variety of factors. Resilience materializes largely from the capacity of local communities to prepare and plan for, respond, absorb, and recover from disasters and get accustomed to new and different circumstances such as economic decline or growth, technological advances, and the impact of climate change. Interventions to improve resilience to disasters need both the ‘bottom-up approaches at the local community stage and ‘top-down’ policies by the state and federal agencies (Doherty, 2010). Local plans are affected by variations in local conditions across communities, and existing jurisdictional matters around who is in the capacity to act in response to the call to boost resilience and under what circumstances. Each local community is unique in their geography, history, culture, demography, governance, economic enterprise and infrastructure. In addition, the risks each community face vary with regard to exposure levels and local hazards. Local plans to improve resilience to disasters in one region may not be similar in terms of assets, baselines and requirements in another region. Enhancing resilience in the face of a disaster risk call also has advantages for a community even when the disaster has not occurred. It improves the social capital for handling more common community disputes (Doherty, 2010). Although every community requires a unique local plan for enhancing resilience, some universal approaches can aid in advancing towards increased capacity to recover from and withstand disasters. Such plans are usually aimed at reinforcing both the social and physical infrastructure. The social infrastructure mirrors the societal bonds among the people living in the community and their dedication to communal problem solving while the physical; infrastructure encompasses the critical lifelines and built environment that house and sustain human activity (Jha, 2013). The local plan would include community organization with specified roles and responsibilities, risk management, identified leaders, a mutually created community commitment culture, a resource control function to allocate values to the assets of the community and metrics to review the progress (Doherty, 2010). Other elements such as community self-sufficiency, mutual aid and interrelations with neighboring communities, NGOs, federal and state government agencies and a self-reliance culture should be considered in the development of a local plan. Reliance rating system and performance metrics show the assessment condition and requirements for significant progress in developing resilience and required performance of important infrastructure and services following disruption. Organization of the community indicates its structure and leadership while codes and standards represent the required development and building codes, standards, and zoning restrictions where enforcement and compliance are highly emphasized (Doherty, 2010). The elements of communication and education characterize communication, outreach, and education practices and plans to make resilience reach all members of the community. Local capacity refers to the incorporated to close critical capacity gaps and establish baselines in the community. Resource management is a factor that combines resources including mutual aid agreements, financial and human capital, asset management policies and important links within agencies and communities. In summary, the local resilience plan considers organization, progression, consistency, adaptability and compatibility of the plan with other plans (Chief officer: principles and practice. 2012). 4. Resource Inventory and Management Task Force ◦Evacuation, Sheltering, and Disaster Housing planning • The county Resource Inventory and Management Task Force will engage both local and external non-profits, and the private agencies strengthen the capabilities and readiness of its response personnel, enhance technical emergency communications during evacuation and create more plans and doctrines to make sure we effectively engage with our emergency management partners from all over the community. • We will make county resources available to partners in advance of and following disasters, including items such as meals, water and tarps. • The taskforce management team will be sufficiently equipped to perform search and rescue operations and evacuation. • The county will allocate funds to the taskforce for both individual assistance and public assistance, including housing, legal services, crisis counseling, reimbursement to remove debris • We will engage all county employees effectively in execution of collaborative disaster missions. In partnership with both local and external private and non-profit partners, we will evacuate survivors expeditiously minimize loss of lives during disasters. ◦Pandemic Response planning The county’s response mission pursues to carry out emergency operations to save property and lives by putting emergency equipment, supplies, and personnel; evacuating survivors providing water, food and shelter, and medical care to the needy victims and revamping public services. We aim to support communities in reconstruction in order to enable civic institutions, individuals, businesses, and government organizations get back to normal life and prevent similar disasters in the future. Information Sharing Task Force ◦Evacuation, Sheltering, and Disaster Housing planning The information sharing taskforce will focus on establishing a strong working relationship with the media to ensure that threat, preparedness and crisis information offered to the public is timely, accurate and actionable in context. The taskforce will adopt a comprehensive approach to disaster housing planning information sharing by carefully looking into the known credulous vulnerabilities of database technology and the impacts of this these vulnerabilities. The information sharing taskforce will also develop a network integrated information model for the flow of information regarding its plans in this subject. It will also periodically revise the current policies for information sharing and act decisively and promptly to implement sheltering, evacuation and disaster housing planning. ◦Pandemic Response planning The taskforce will carry out a national community-based preparedness, and pandemic response campaign to ensure information about plans of responding to pandemics is effectively shared among the private and public sector partners. It will create a suitable process and organization for cress-sector information exchange and maintain flexibility and response in containing diversity among the private sector partners. This will enhance information flow from the partners to the community during pandemic response (Molino, 2006). We will also invest in more efficient and more engaged media via specific intentioned programs aimed at growing a more integrated working relationship between the county, the media and the private sector in the event of pandemics. It will also focus on training the public and private sector on the techniques of collecting, analyzing, disseminating and using county information. Additionally, this taskforce will review and establish whether to create recommendations regarding issues such as: • Guarantee the implementation of a proper intelligence requirements process for private sector partners, including educating stakeholders and physical mechanisms. • Ensuring responsible sharing of information about pandemic response in order to satisfy the just public rights to access information without bringing even greater risks to the community by releasing sensitive information that could assist terrorists. • Supporting other local and state sharing task forces’ initiatives, especially private sector plans and responsibilities in local and state fusion centers (Özdamar et al, 2004). References National Research Council (U.S.)., & National Academies (U.S.). (2012). Disaster resilience: A national imperative. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Wagner, B. (2008, July 1). Damage Control: FEMA on a Mission to Regain Credibility. National Defense, 5, 19. Özdamar, L., Ekinci, E., & Küçükyazici, B. (2004). Emergency Logistics Planning in Natural Disasters. Annals of Operations Research, 129(1), 217-245. Government Institutes. (2001). Principles of risk-based decision making. Rockville, MD: Government Institutes, ABS Consulting. Molino, L. N. (2006). Emergency incident management systems: Fundamentals and applications. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley-Interscience. Chief officer: principles and practice. (2012). Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Doherty, G. W. (2010). From crisis to recovery: Strategic planning for response, resilience and recovery. Ann Arbor, MI: Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Institute. Jha, A. K., & Stanton-Geddes, Z. (2013). Strong, Safe, and Resilient: A Strategic Policy Guide for Disaster Risk Management in East Asia and the Pacific. Washington: World Bank Publications. Read More