During disasters,
large numbers of people and groups unaffiliated with traditional emergency
response organizations converge at the scene to offer assistance. These
spontaneous volunteers can be a significant resource, but are often
ineffectively used and can actually hinder emergency activities by creating
health, safety, and security problems and distracting responders from
their duties. The challenge for incident managers is to capitalize on
the available volunteer resources while ensuring safety and the responders’
ability to effectively perform tasks within the established incident
management system. This research presents a systems-based approach to
planning for spontaneous volunteer management in disasters. This requires
a disaster volunteer management system (VMS). Historical evidence and
new national strategies to increase volunteerism heighten the importance
of an effective, efficient, and inclusive VMS. To date, disaster volunteer
management is not a robust part of many local, state, and national plans,
nor has it been significantly addressed in the National Incident Management
System.
The research works
to answer two questions:
1. What are the essential
disaster volunteer management functions to leverage opportunities and
manage associated risks?
The research provides a comprehensive
analysis of volunteer management literature, systems, and plans, to
identify causal factors and intervening management functions to manage
the risks and leverage opportunities. A functional model for the VMS
is developed based on this analysis.
2. What are the required
resources of a volunteer management system as a function of volunteer
response?
Once necessary functions
are identified, it is important to understand the resources needed to
carry out the associated activities. If managers understand the constraints,
or chokepoints, of the system, they can better allocate resources and
estimate the capacity of the system. A proof-of-concept simulation model
of the inter-related volunteer processing components was developed based
on data from an exercise of an actual system, and different design alternatives
were analyzed to determine needed resources for a specific VMS implementation.
The research findings can
assist organizations in designing tailored effective, efficient, and
inclusive volunteer management systems. The research methodology also
contributes to the field of systems engineering through the application
of a systems approach to a critical emergency management issue.
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