Integrated Emergency Management

The broad concept of integrated emergency management (IEM) is aimed at building greater resilience within the community in the face of a broad range of disruptive challenges that may be faced in County Durham and Darlington and the wider North East region.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 focuses on emergency preparedness but its requirements should be seen in the context of IEM. There are six activities that are fundamental to an IEM approach:

  • Anticipation: sometimes called horizon scanning and focuses on being aware of new hazards and threat which might affect County Durham & Darlington.
  • Assessment: covers those hazards and threats identified through horizon scanning that could lead to an emergency and are assessed against the likelihood of them occurring and the impact they would cause.
  • Prevention: this is mainly concerned with other pieces of legislation. The CCA 2004 is limited to actions that help prevent an emergency which may be about to occur.
  • Preparation: concerns the maintenance of planning arrangements and effective management structures.
  • Response: deals with managing the immediate consequences of an emergency.
  • Recovery: is the management of the longer term consequences of an emergency and getting back to ‘normal’ as quickly as possible.

The CCA 2004 focuses on two of these – assessment and preparation – and they are covered extensively in the guidance Emergency Preparedness. The other guidance Emergency Response and Recovery, covers the final two – response and recovery.

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