An investigation of risk management issues in the context of emergency response systems

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, efforts to enhance risk management have taken on increased importance both at the national and state levels. Most current incident response systems do not consider risk as part of the decision making scenario. To effectively mitigate multi-incident coordinated terrorist threats, it is important to consider risk in incident management systems. Based on the review of previous literature, this study proposes a theory-based risk framework for an emergency response system. Proof of concept is provided by applying the framework to two separate existing incident management systems - the urban search-and-rescue system and the biological detection systems.