| Emergency management is an established system to prepare for, respond to, recover from and mitigate the consequence of disasters. Natural and manmade disasters have increased public interest in the systems and organizations that have evolved to protect the public from their effects. The Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) was developed as a method to evaluate and accredit emergency management programs. Between January 2003 and December 2004, with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, EMAP conducted baseline assessments of 35 U.S. state and territory emergency management programs.; This study was designed to analyze the results of those EMAP baseline assessments. Results suggest these programs focus more on the response phase of emergency management, and less on the recovery and mitigation phases. Additional research suggests programs can more easily achieve accreditation if they have strong executive and financial support and develop ways to document institutional memory. |
