As it reorganizes, adds new regional planners, and tries to become more nimble, the DHS's FEMA agency is also using a new emergency response methodology in meetings with state and local governments.
Still in the throes of a major reorganization, the US Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS)'s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is now starting to use a methodology called the "Gap Analysis Tool" as an aid to emergency response planning, and there is some possibility that the tool will eventually be turned into a software application.
In a speech at this week's Maritime Security Conference in New York, Marko Bourne, the director of FEMA's Office of Policy and Program Analysis, said that FEMA has been undergoing "significant reorganization (and) significant increases to staff" over the past 18 months, so as to "improve the ability to handle logistics."
The staff increases have included the addition of operational planners to all of FEMA's regional offices in the US, according to Bourne.
The intent behind FEMA's revampment is to make FEMA's activities "much more nimble than in the past," he told the conference attendees.
