1. Human, Legal-Compliance, and Ethical Issues of Emergency
Preparedness
Phillip Van Saun
University of California, San Diego

2. Goals & Objectives:
Defining and achieving markers of success while leveraging social-
capital and operating within ethical and legal frameworks is the focus of
this course.
The challenge of developing standards-of-care for emergency
management service delivery in an increasingly complex, globally-
linked and fast-paced economy, compounded by associated under or un-
mitigated risks, forms the backdrop and frames the challenges we will
discuss in this course.
The looming liabilities imbedded in the trend toward public outcry
against economic and social disparity – including in the delivery of
public safety services - increase management’s need to scrutinize
operations to first understand, communicate and apply standards-of-
care to an evolving worldview of what it means to effectively prepare,
mitigate, respond and recover from emergencies.

3. Learning Outcomes:
At the completion of this course students will be able to:
 Demonstrate the ability to develop sound analytical findings in periods of
uncertainty and duress to solve strategic and tactical problems, identifying
solution alternatives, and selecting best-fit solutions.
 Cite the primary legal risks inherent to the delivery of emergency services,
and develop strategies to mitigate exposure to litigation; provide examples of
risk sensing mechanisms and practices to mitigate associated risks and
vulnerabilities.
 State how best to effect positive organizational change in the application of
emergency and crisis management practices and standards, and develop
associated emergency management standards-of-care.
 Express how social capital and moral creativity shape mitigation, response and
recovery.
 Demonstrate emergency management strategies in response to reputational
and organizational risk by active participation in a capstone emergency
management micro-game.

4. Expectation Gap
 Must seek by listening and scanning
 Must know stakeholder—their expectations
 Must know performance on expectations
 Change behavior and policies
 Improve awareness or the perception gap
 Conditioned for disruption

5. Bad Data Guided U.S. Fukushima Call

6. Conduct crisis micro-games.

7. Present the basic Discuss
Brainstorm challenges to
details of the risk possible solutions
to be addressed resolution
Determine
Implement steps Select moves to
possible moves
to mitigate respond to the
given the realities
identified risks problem
of your culture

8. Crisis decision-making micro-games
 Present a problem – Problem Based Learning
 Facilitate the game
 Encourage brainstorming
 Identify and adjust for bias in the decision-cycle
 Guide the process to fast & frugal decision-making
 Close with plus/delta

9. Focus on the impact of cognitive bias
to decision-making and adjust
accordingly.

10. Confirmatory Bias
We tend to perceive and accept input that is
consistent with and reinforces our biases.
We tend to ignore input that is not consistent
with or challenges our biases.
We tend to interpret input in ways that
confirm our biases.

11. Fast & frugal crisis-decision tools
 Fluency heuristic - If one  Take-the-best - To infer
alternative is recognized which of two alternatives
faster than another, infer has the higher value: (a)
that it has the higher value search through cues in order
on the criterion. of validity, (b) stop.
Schooler & Hertwig, 2005 Gigerenzer and Goldstein,
1996

12. Fast & frugal
 A good enough decision.
 Made soon enough to matter.
 Communicated well enough to be understood.
 Carried out well enough to work.

13. Evacuate [or follow MTA guidance] and stay?
 One alternative is  2700 employees survive.
recognized faster than
another, infer that it has the
higher value.
 Rick Rescorla Director of
 Which of two alternatives Security at Morgan Stanley
has the higher value – Stay WTC 9/11
or leave?

14. Resist the temptation to develop or
rely on elaborate and pedantic
response plans.

15. Managing Risk Transfer
Applying a standards of care approach to risk management.
 Definition of standard of care: A diagnostic and treatment
process that a clinician should follow for a certain type of patient,
illness, or clinical circumstance. (New England Journal of Medicine,
2004)
 Standard of care n. the watchfulness, attention, caution and
prudence that a reasonable person in the circumstances would
exercise
 In legal terms, the level at which the average, prudent provider in a
given community would practice .

16. Scan the horizon for threats, risks,
and opportunities.

17. “Awareness, without the
requisite tools, usually means
that you die enlightened.”

18. Apply a lean crisis-management
structure.

19. Synthetic Organizations
Usually in crisis … organizations concede authority
for a time to a new entity which then acts in some
sense on their behalf, followed by a return to a new
normalcy, perhaps with some key adjustments.

20. Do not assume rational action.

21. Predictable surprise
“They (business leaders) tend to ignore or downplay the
possibility of random or uncontrollable occurrences
that may impede their progress toward a goal.”
- Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman

22. “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of
lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity,
myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief”
“People, organizations,
communities, countries make bad
decisions all the time based on
their experience – Some call this
the “preparing to fight the last war”
syndrome.”
- Wayne Blanchard

23. Remember the last event, and learn
from it.

24. July 31, 1985
To: Vice President of Engineering, Morton Thiokol
From: Roger Boisjoly
‘It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate
action to dedicate a team to solve the problem, with the field
joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of
losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities.“

25. January 28, 1986

26. Think about how to bring goodness
out of a bad situation.

27. Establish a ‘New Normal.’

28. Declare victory and leave the
battlefield.

29. Chance favors the prepared mind

30. Thank you.