Institute for Continuing Education

Guide for All-Hazard Emergency Operations Planning

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:

• Define all-hazard emergency operations planning and differentiate the all-hazard approach from single-hazard and scenario-specific planning models, articulating the advantages and limitations of each.
• Describe the statutory, regulatory, and doctrinal foundations of emergency operations planning in the United States, including the Robert T. Stafford Act, the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, Presidential Policy Directive 8, the National Preparedness Goal, and Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101.
• Explain the six-step planning process recommended by CPG 101 and apply each step—forming a collaborative planning team, understanding the situation, determining goals and objectives, plan development, plan preparation and approval, and plan implementation and maintenance—to a jurisdiction or organization.
• Conduct and interpret a community risk assessment, including hazard identification, vulnerability analysis, consequence estimation, and the prioritization of threats and hazards using structured methodologies such as the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) process.
• Construct the three principal components of a traditional emergency operations plan—the basic plan, functional annexes, and hazard-, threat-, or incident-specific appendices—and compare the traditional functional format with the Emergency Support Function (ESF) and agency-and-department-focused formats.
• Integrate whole community principles into the planning process, including meaningful engagement of people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs, children, older adults, individuals with limited English proficiency, and animal owners.
• Align emergency operations plans with the National Incident Management System, the Incident Command System, mutual aid frameworks, and continuity of operations and continuity of government requirements.
• Design a program of plan validation and maintenance, employing the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) progression of discussion-based and operations-based exercises, after-action reporting, corrective action programs, and scheduled plan review cycles.
• Evaluate an existing emergency operations plan against recognized quality criteria, identifying common planning pitfalls such as the “paper plan syndrome,” unrealistic resource assumptions, and failures of vertical and horizontal integration.
• Apply emergency operations planning principles to specialized settings and functions, including healthcare facilities, schools, mass care, evacuation and shelter-in-place decision-making, and recovery transition.

Course Information