Measuring the quality of emergency management

Widely accepted best practices for measuring quality provide tangible guidelines for managers to gauge activities within a given industry, as well as standards for management practice. In emergency management, few such standards exist due to a number of factors: a workforce and culture dominated by first response practitioners, with little experience in technical management; the complexity of interacting activities in managing disasters; and the ability of the media to influence perception of what constitutes success in emergency management. A study of the application of engineering management principles with special emphasis on quality measures is presented for the emergency management industry, as well as a survey of current organizations researching or applying such standards.