An Emergency Management Playbook for State Transportation Agencies

NCHRP Research Report 931: A Guide to Emergency Management at State Transportation Agencies, was recently published. Several emergency management courses and generic planning templates are currently available to transportation emergency managers at airports, transit agencies, and state departments of transportation (DOTs), including NCHRP Report 525, Surface Transportation Security, Volume. 16: A Guide to Emergency Response Planning at State Transportation Agencies (2010). Those, together with federal guidance promulgated through Incident Command System/National Incident Management System/Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (ICS/NIMS/HSEEP) doctrine, are necessary, but not sufficient, for ready implementation. There is a need for a strategy-driven, actionable guide—a playbook—that, with incidental implementation support, will help emergent and part-time transportation emergency managers to understand, plan, and implement an emergency preparedness program that fits their agency’s needs, capabilities, and challenges. Such a playbook will serve as a simple, practical, and comprehensive emergency preparedness program development guide for transportation emergency managers; be generally applicable to all transportation emergency operations centers (EOCs); and be consistent with ICS/NIMS/HSEEP doctrine. A transportation-specific playbook will help close the gap in transportation emergency preparedness and enable quicker and more effective uptake of valuable scenario-based training and exercising tools that help organizations apply prerequisite planning and program development. Translating strategy from the playbook to the real world (how to do it) is complex, as states vary in how they organize their activities. This project will develop and execute a strategy to effectively bridge the gap between all-hazards emergency management research and state transportation agency practice to improve state transportation agency responses over a broad continuum of emergencies affecting the nation’s travelers, economy, and infrastructure. The objectives of this project were (1) to develop a playbook to support emergency management program review and development for state transportation agencies and (2) to develop and execute a deployment strategy to familiarize the affected transportation agencies of every state with the playbook and supporting emergency management materials. The playbook and related products and activities should encompass state DOTs, public transportation systems, and other transportation agencies under state control or influence (i.e., state transportation agencies). Understanding pandemics, their impacts on transportation, and potential effective response has become more important, not only for the response to COVID-19, but also if, as the World Health Organization warns, we are now “living in a time of viruses.”

• Record URL:
  http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=4207

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $800000
• Contract Numbers:

  Project 20-116

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Cooperative Highway Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

  444 North Capitol Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Parker, Stephan

• Performing Organizations:

  Louis Berger Group

  30A Vreeland Road
  Florham Park, NJ  United States  07932
• Principal Investigators:

  Matherly, Deborah

• Start Date: 20200128
• Expected Completion Date: 20220727
• Actual Completion Date: 20220727
• Source Data: RiP Project 40853

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Emergency management; Emergency response time; Hazards and emergency operations; Incident management; State departments of transportation; State of the practice; Traffic incidents
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01599002
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project 20-116
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: May 12 2016 3:24PM