Black Swan Events: Global Emergency Management

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As emergency management leaders for the 21st century, we need to develop new risk assessment and management models to factor in the “unthinkable” globally impacting ‘black swam’ type events, using satellite imagery, and all the other technology and resources available to better enable us to forecast and plan for these type of events, with the view to minimize their impacts. These technologies should be globally linked, like a global warning system similar to a Tsunami early warning system.

According to Mileti there several things that can be done to facilitate this paradigm shift in thinking in leadership in emergency management. He is of the view that there needs to be an adaptation of a global systems perspective in addressing emergency management issues. He stated that human beings need to realize that while we cannot change the course of natural hazards like hurricane, tornadoes, or earthquakes, we need to accept their responsibility for the extent of impact as result of some of our actions such as building houses in a river bed, or lack of mitigation strategies.

Mileti stressed that as emergency management managers we need to anticipate constant change in this dynamic environment. Changes such as change is atmospheric conditions, air and water quality. With over 30 years of research in Emergency Management, future leaders should look to build on the works of the previous emergency management stalwarts, skewing the plans and strategies towards the occurrence of future catastrophic events.

Similar to G7 summit that is held by countries to discuss global issues, there could be a similar forum involving all the countries of the world, to discuss and formulate joint strategies to plan and respond to ‘black swan’ event...

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...ers we know this war with these catastrophic black swan events is inevitable, and as soldiers we need to do what we know will work in order to survive. We need to think outside the box, while working in a collaborative manner with all the players within our ‘sandbox’, sharing resources, information, technologies, talents, for one common goal, and that is the survival of the human race against these ‘black swan enemies.

In conclusion these complex events called disasters are a permanent part of our reality once we continue to live on this planet, so it is our responsibility to study past events and learn from them, and perfect the preparation and mitigation of these events, through education and training, innovative thinking do our best to try at least to ensure the survival of our species and emergency management leaders we will play a key role in this process.

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