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The IAEM Virtual Conference Program is nearing completion. All speakers have been selected. There will be a mixture of plenaries (one-speaker only available during the time slot) and breakouts (multiple sessions to choose from during the time slot.)
View the schedule at a glance for this two day event below. Schedule At a Glance
Time
Session Title
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM ET
Opening and Welcome from IAEM-USA President Carolyn Harshman and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM ET
Surfside Florida Champlain Towers South Collapse: A Canine Handler’s Perspective This presentation will cover the aspects and experiences of one of the many Canine Search Teams that responded to the Champlain Towers South condominium collapse in Surfside, FL in June of 2021.
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Collaborative Education of the USFA and Emergency Management Emergency management has often been described as an umbrella helping coordinate the emergency services in times of disasters. The United States Fire Administration through its National Fire Academy is helping bridge the gap for fire service leaders through various educational programs and courses that engage fire service leaders in best practices in emergency management.
Using EM Principles to Improve Flood Mitigation and Climate Change Impacts Sometimes floodplain expertise gets dampened or short-changed until there's flooding when, in reality, mitigation is an all-weather activity.
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM ET
The Technology-Driven Future of Emergency Response Brought to you by Merit
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM ET
Plenary - Community Resilience: The Art of Effective Public Private Partnerships Walmart’s Global Emergency Management equips one of the world’s largest private sector companies with planning, preparedness, response, and recovery capability to disasters. Like all aspects of emergency management, success is driven by the professional network that our emergency managers have developed, particularly with the public sector.
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM ET
Driving Decisions Using Weather Data Weather and emergency management go hand in hand, but can you leverage weather data to help drive your decision making in planning and preparedness?
Emergency Management Strategy, Operations, and Tactics for Tornadoes Tornadoes pose a deadly and challenging threat to much of the United States. Emergency managers must approach each severe weather episode with an eye toward community preparedness, unique response and readiness considerations, and an expectation that each event could result in significant impacts.
COOP and Continuity Post Covid - Reimagining Resiliency When Covid hit, it brought with it a bold new reality for resilience professionals. COOP or Business Continuity planning, often completed for compliance or audit, quickly became real-time planning for action.
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM ET
The Mental Health and Wellness Caucus: an Introduction
This session will discuss the newly formed Mental Health and Wellness Caucus. It will highlight the vision, mission, and goals of the caucus, how the caucus came into being, where the caucus hopes to have impacts in both IAEM and the emergency management profession, as well as some accomplishments of the caucus.
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM ET
Applying Mileti's Reseach…or… What Dennis Always Wanted Us to Do Dr. Dennis Mileti was a luminary in the field of hazards and disaster research. A sociologist by training, he published extensively and he was widely recognized as one of the world's leading risk communication scholars. He was an advocate of creating messages and warnings that encouraged people to prepare for and respond appropriately to disaster risks. He knew that moving this research into action could save lives.
Applying a Complexity Framework: Learning from the COVID-19 Response for Novel EM Professional Approaches to Complex Events
The preparedness and response to the COVID-19 emergency certainly demonstrated many characteristics of a complex adaptive system as multiple agencies, interests, priorities, biases, and equities interacted in both predictable and surprising ways. Traditional doctrine and practices worked in some efforts but were inadequate in many others.
It’s Time for Emergency Managers to Prepare for the Fragility of Electric Power Grids As regards the electric power grid, the most critical of critical infrastructures, there are vulnerabilities, there are threats and, therefore, there is risk. For too long, emergency managers have operated under set of very specious assumptions regarding the reliability and resilience of the grid.
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM ET
The Emerging Professionals Caucus an Introduction
This session will provide an overview of the brand new Emerging Professionals Caucus. We will discuss the Caucus' vision and the deliverables we intend to have. These include EMbark, the emerging professionals program at the annual conference; the integration with the career workshop; networking; mentoring/coaching; and connections to IAEM engagement opportunities.
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM ET
Emergency Management Jeopardy
The Role of the Louisiana Designated Regional Coordinator in EM during COVID and Hurricanes
Post Katrina Louisiana’s Health Department (LDH) used some of the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) funding to create a regional Emergency Medical Services liaison position entitled EMS Designated Regional Coordinators (EMS DRCs). Regional EMS DRCs work with local pre-hospital agencies, hospital coalitions, and local/state/federal counterparts during the preparedness and response phases of a disaster.
Climate Change Impacts and New Paradigm for Disaster and Emergency Management In the context of the major disasters over the last few years ranging from but not limited to catastrophic events such as Hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Ida, fires in California and Colorado, the prolonged droughts in parts of South and Southern Great Plains, unseasonable severe weather and tornadoes, and the significant and widespread flooding, it is important to discuss the relationship between climate change and the potential impacts on the severity and frequency of natural disasters.
The Salvation Army’s Response to Disasters in Canada: A Century of Evolution
In 2021, The Salvation Army delivered essential humanitarian support to residents of British Columbia affected by wildfire and then flooding. That response was based on standards and abilities of the time. The Salvation Army is currently working on the development of Operation Red Shield Readiness which aims to improve its capacities in the 4 pillars of emergency management.
The Allied Professionals Caucus: an Introduction
The IAEM-USA Allied Professionals Caucus was established in February 2022. The Caucus’ Mission is to provide a collaboration space for emergency management professionals who serve in a multi-function or multi-discipline role, not represented by any of the existing IAEM-USA Caucus’.
Plenary - The Day I Discovered I Didn't Have a Clue: Transforming a Responder Mindset to a Preparedness Mindset As a seasoned commander of law enforcement response who had recently been assigned to oversee emergency management, my first “bad day” happened and I soon discovered I didn’t have a clue.
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM ET
Networking Break
Disaster Preparedness Education for the Neurodiverse Population during Severe Weather Over time, emergency preparedness activities have lacked sufficient focus on individuals with special needs. Preparedness is a shared responsibility at the national, state, local community, and individual level and is a critical public health investment.
Anticipating The Big One: Takeaways from Hurricane Ida In recent years, the United States has been affected by numerous extreme rainfall and flooding events, and these have been enormously costly both in terms of economic damage and lives lost.
Developing a Game Plan: An Inside Look into Super Bowl LVI Joint Information Center In one of the most widely watched Super Bowls of all time, SoFi Stadium in the City of Inglewood hosted SBLVI. The game day went off seamlessly to the public, mainly due to the thousands of countless hours of behind-the-scenes work all allied agency partners put into the event.
Behind the Mask... The Research Practice Divide
In this podcast style presentation, practitioner, Cathy Clark, and academic, Jessica Jensen, will share their journey from when they met to the projects they are tackling today. In sharing their story, Cathy will ask about aspects of research and researchers that have long confused and frustrated emergency management practitioners.
By Our Powers Combined: Converging Cybersecurity & Emergency Management
Hybrid Incidents, those with a significant cyber and physical component, are becoming more prevalent and impactful year after year.
National Weather Service: Building a Weather, Water, and Climate Ready Nation The National Weather Service (NWS) continues to enjoy our collaboration with IAEM and our collective efforts to build a Weather Ready Nation in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing number of extreme weather, water, and climate events.
3:30 PM - 3:45 PM ET