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Emergency Management: Incident Command System

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Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management

Definition

Emergency management describes the activities of professionals in a number of fields intended to manage resources to reduce vulnerability to hazards and to cope with disasters that may have been created as a result of accidents, by individuals (such as terrorists or active shooters) or by nature (such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, or wildfires). The Incident Command System (ICS) facilitates managing these activities by integrating multiple agencies’ facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures, and communications into a common organizational structure that is scalable to the size and type of emergency, is applicable across disciplines, and can be used to organize immediate and long-term field operations for natural or manmade incidents.

Introduction

Emergency management is not only about responding once an incident has occurred, it also includes the agencies and activities responsible for protecting against an event’s occurrence, mitigating the consequences of and recovering...

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References

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Further Reading

  • Bodiru, A. B., & Racz, L. A. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of emergency response: A human factors and systems engineering approach. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

    Dorothy Moses Schulz

Authors
  1. Dorothy Moses Schulz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dorothy Moses Schulz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Security, Fire & Emergency Mgmt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA

    Lauren R. Shapiro

  2. Dept. of Security, Fire & Emergency Mgmt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

    Marie-Helen Maras

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Schulz, D.M. (2019). Emergency Management: Incident Command System. In: Shapiro, L., Maras, MH. (eds) Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_135-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_135-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5

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