Managing Emerging Risk: The Capstone of Preparedness

281 Pages·2011·3.922 MB·English

by  Kevin D Burton

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Business / Risk Management
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From Main Street to Mumbai, Managing Emerging Risk: The Capstone T
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of Preparedness considers the new global drivers behind threats and
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hazards facing all those tasked with protecting the public and private
sector. The text delves into the global mindset of public and private
sector emergency managers and presents a new risk landscape vastly
different from the one existing ten years ago.
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The book begins by presenting a series of fictitious scenarios each
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resulting in mass destruction and fatalities. These are each followed by
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actual news stories that support the scenarios and demonstrate that the
proposed events—seemingly unthinkable—have the potential to occur. A
Next, the author identifies two drivers in the practice of emergency
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management and general preparedness today that constitute our view of
the future and the new face of risk. The first is the Disaster Halo Effect— I
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the idea that modern threats exhibit more than one event. The second
is the worldview of our nation as a Market State focused on the trading G
of goods, services, and ideas among the nation-states. The book also

reviews the history of preparedness and discusses its relationship with E
large-scale threats, establishing that hindsight bias has hurt our ability M
to plan and respond to the unexpected.
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The chapters that follow explore what is needed to better cultivate,
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design, develop, and operate emerging management and preparedness
thinking in the current environment. Each chapter begins with key terms I
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and objectives and ends with thought-provoking questions. Introducing
a new paradigm of thought that takes into account the chief influencers G
of global threats, the book arms emergency and business operations

managers with the ammo needed to successfully confront emerging
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threats in the 21st century.
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K11272
ISBN: 978-1-4398-2641-6
90000
www.crcpress.com
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K11272 cvr mech.indd 1 11/3/11 1:11 PM

MANAGING
EMERGING
RISK
The Capstone of Preparedness

MANAGING
EMERGING
R IS K
The Capstone of Preparedness
KEVIN D. BURTON
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
© 2012 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
Version Date: 20111031
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4398-2643-0 (eBook - PDF)
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
About the Author ix
1 Imagine This 1
2 The New Face of Risk and the Market State 35
3 Scenario Planning, Strategy, and Risk Assessments for an
Unknown Future 69
4 Sources of Data for First Event Scenarios 99
5 Memes Make Meaning: Introduction to Memes and Clusters 131
6 Coolhunters and Pattern Recognition 165
7 Putting the Market State to Use: Application, Practice, and
Understanding 191
8 Tracking Memes: Data Trends and the Diffusion of Innovation 219
9 Engaging in a New State of Practice 245
v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book and the author have benefited from the wise council of many
close peers and working emergency management professionals who
remain in the shadows, as is the state of our current profession, doing
the good work that they do. The author owes a debt of gratitude to these
professionals, as does our nation. Unsung heroes and silent operations are
not appropriate to such an important profession, in my opinion.
The author would like to thank the countless personal advisors
who drove this project to completion. Among them, Jeff Bearce, a solid
friend who holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of California,
Berkeley, patiently explored with me confounding questions regarding
the ethics of emergency response and the sophistry of mastery. Andrew
Granger trusted me to take a leap of faith into the unknown and stood by
me in so many ways over the past ten years. John Whitaker with his wife
Rachel provided the grounding necessary to balance life with work. All of
you and many others made this book possible with your gentle support.
My father, Dr. George Burton, acted as a critical reader, deep thinker,
and friend throughout the process—probing the logic and presentation
of the material every step of the way and, in the process, transforming
our relationship from one of father and son to that of informed peers tak-
ing one another’s counsel. My wife, Adriana, believed in me and helped
me find the room to make this book a reality; my daughter Athena put
sunshine on the edge of every cloud and the wisdom of innocence at my
fingertips. This book is dedicated to my family, who defined me and sup-
ported me in the process of writing it. To them I owe many thanks.
A great portion of gratitude is owed to the tireless efforts of edi-
tor Jason Philo who was able to make sense of my sentences. Ronnie
Richmond, my friend and the illustrator of this book, was able to visual-
ize the abstract and bring the creative design of learning to my attention.
My publisher, CRC Press and Mark Listewnik, urged me to write what I
know, defying the status quo and setting out on a journey of rethinking
risk. I cannot thank all of you enough.
vii