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Emergency Telecommunications and Mitigation-Oriented Policymaking Print E-mail
Written by Gordon Gow   
Monday, 17 January 2005
Article Index
Emergency Telecommunications and Mitigation-Oriented Policymaking
The Public Sector and Emergency Telecommunications
The Private Sector and Emergency Telecommunications
The Management of Critical Infrastructure
References
Page 3 of 5

Emergency telecommunications support for the private sector has tended to exist as an issue for the marketplace and thus has remained outside the domain of public policy. Its private market equivalent is known as ‘business continuity planning’ or ‘business resumption planning.’ The literature on business continuity planning has taken up the challenge of telecommunications failures, most notably reflected in the work of Leo Wrobel, who has written extensively in this area (Wrobel, 1993, 1997). Wrobel’s work addresses the needs and issues confronting business and community organizations in the face of telecommunications disasters, and he has produced detailed planning guidelines to support business continuity planning. Continuity refers not only to the capability of a private firm or community organization to quickly respond to a disaster but, more importantly, draws attention to the idea that long-range planning for successful recovery is a means of mitigating disasters. In reviewing the literature in this field, however, one discovers that focus tends to be on existing solutions and methods and does not sufficiently/always explore the constraints affecting an organization’s ability to effectively engage in continuity planning.

There are ongoing civil engineering studies on infrastructure vulnerability that examine the direct physical impact of disasters on communications networks (Schiff and Tang, 1995). This body of research into what is called ‘lifeline engineering’ represents another form of private sector/non-governmental involvement in emergency telecommunications. While this area of investigation may have a long -range focus on infrastructure development, it deals primarily with physical network elements rather than wider social and economic concerns.