Four elements of adaptation 39
PREPARATION AND RESPONSE TO EMERGENCY EVENTS Climate change and extreme weather may present situations that have not been anticipated or thoroughly planned for. An organisation will face not only routine emergencies (familiar types of event), but also novel emergencies, where the event is new and unfamiliar in nature or magnitude. In such an emergency there will be relatively little understanding of the situation and trained and practiced responses may become inadequate. To be resilient in the face of novel emergency, an organisation should develop skills in problem diagnosis, improvisation, communication and collaborative actions. The response to a novel emergency should be fault tolerant, while in a routine emergency the ideal response would be executed with precision.
Both modes of emergency require excellence in planning, decision making and situational awareness. Situational awareness means being alert to danger. Organisations with good situational awareness constantly gather and assimilate information about extreme weather and other environmental hazards, and the impact these might have on relevant structures and systems. However, the type of emergency will affect how these processes are accomplished and what forms of leadership, organisation and resources are needed. For example, the early stages of a novel emergency call for collaborative leadership and flattened organisational structure to find the best forms of response. The arguments in this section follow the reasoning in Leonard, H.B. and Howitt A.M. (2008). 'Routine' or 'Crisis' - The Search for Excellence. Crisis/Response Journal 4 (3): 32-35.