Office of Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, through a cooperative agreement

Society today is increasingly exposed to the effects of emergencies. These situations not only affect the normal functioning of the society but also the functioning of medical facilities. The preparedness of medical facilities is a very important factor influencing the success in dealing with emergencies and crisis situations. The preparedness of the health care system as a whole consists of all medical facilities in the Czech Republic. Therefore, it is desirable that they are prepared to address them. The objective of the thesis, in its theoretical part, was to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of crisis preparedness in medical facilities. The practical part was intended to introduce in more detail the territory of the South Moravian Region and its issues and to map out emergency preparedness in the specified research set. The research set included medical facilities in the region that are not university hospitals but that are part of the region traumatology plan. The data on this issue was collected using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was in a format of selected work indicators of emergency preparedness and it was uniform for all the respondents. The work indicators were as follows: theoretical preparedness, organizational preparedness and practical preparedness. Based on the questionnaire survey, analysis of the results and determining the average level of preparedness of all the participating medical facilities, it was concluded that the preparedness of the medical facilities of a non-university type in the South Moravian Region is very diverse: from hospitals whose preparedness is excellent to those who do not reach the required basis. In the overall assessment, 40.0 % of the respondents did not reach the determined average. Overall, the level of preparedness of the research set can be seen as slightly below average. To increase the level of preparedness of non-university medical facilities, it is suggested, for example, to create unified procedures for processing various types of plans, to assign each medical facility the obligation to employ a professional emergency manager, and to establish cooperation among individual medical facilities.

In the practical part I have proposed an emergency plan for the Regional Police Directorate of South Bohemia (RPD). The main question was: "what are the potential threats to (i) building (ii) day-to-day operations of the Directorate?" The question was addressed through an expert research and security inspection of the building; identified threats were analysed and an adequate security measures were proposed in the concluding paragraph.Some threats were taken from the Emergency Plan of South Bohemia, some of the other security documentation that establishes a Regional Police Directorate of the South Region. In another part of the Plan of emergency preparedness are contained details of the processor and its activities, which in the case of the RPD of the South Bohemian region only to protect internal security and public order in the region

Readiness of the urgent reception to mass disasters This thesis is dedicated to the readiness of the urgent reception to mass disasters. It deals with the history, evolution and the current state of the urgent reception, both in the Czech Republic in the first place and in the world. Within the scope of this thesis I focus mainly on the work scope of the urgent receptions in dependence to their structure, equipment and their actual preparedness to deal with mass accidents. I focus besides other things on technical equipment of the urgent receptions, which is in frames of the Czech Republic very heterogeneous, but totally crucial to handle possible mass accident. A very import aspect is the matter of education and further training of the medical employees on all levels. It concerns not only medical positions, but also nurses and auxiliary staff. The question of the conditions severity of the admitted patients, their classification according to these conditions and transparent processing of the information about them cannot be passed over. Furthermore the thesis discusses emergency medicine as a discipline and the direction it should, in my opinion, further be heading in order to improve the functioning of the present system of pre-hospital and hospital emergency care. Urgent receptions in the Czech Republic represent a relatively new thing, which results into certain ambivalence of their concept and structure. Each urgent reception is somehow original and adapted to the requirements of the founder and the local situation. There is one thing the urgent receptions have in common, overload with patients who fall into the competence of practitioners. This is associated with the financial loss-making of these departments within the medical facilities. This, especially in the case of the private hospitals, leads to a reluctance of the founder to invest to the urgent reception. In this thesis I mention legal framework, contingency planning in the Czech Republic, contingency plans, their content purpose and type plan with its importance for solving crisis events. Another plan that is resolved in my thesis and that has crucial importance especially, for urgent receptions is the trauma plan of medical facility whose application into practice in the Czech Republic in many health care facilities is very problematic. And the practice of the trauma plan activation itself is, according to my research, the prerogative of only a very small amount of medical facilities.

During our lives, we encounter various situations which we must learn to face so that the impacts on the lives, health and the environment can be as small as possible. One of the means of help usable for the crisis management is to prepare emergency and crisis plans. Given the frequency of natural and anthropogenic threats the planning has become an essential part of our lives. After the amendment of Act No. 240/2000 Coll., on crisis management, the obligation to process emergency preparedness plans for individual entities ensuring implementation of the measures resulting from the emergency plan of the region was updated. For this reason, I have focused in my thesis on the development of the emergency preparedness plan for South Bohemian University Colleges and Canteens. In the theoretical part, I first explained some basic terms. I continued with the description of threads and risks along with the evaluation methods. I also focused on measures to protect population which are on a very good level in CR, some of them has even become a model for the neighbouring countries. I mentioned the crisis situations that are declared when an incident event grows into a crisis situation. Then, I formulated the role of state authorities, local government bodies, security councils and emergency committees. I closed up the theoretical knowledge with the issue of safety planning which aims to reduce the consequences of situation that endanger us. The theoretical part is followed by research conducted by the qualitative form of data collection. The main question that the thesis wants to answer is: What are the risks that endanger performance of the tasks arising from the crisis plan of the region to South Bohemian University in ČB ? Colleges and Canteens? As regards the methodology of the thesis, it was crucial to gather data needed for the processing of the emergency preparedness plan, which are achieved through controlled interviews with the Director of Colleges and University Canteens, safety officer of the University, Head of University Canteen, maintenance staff and through cooperation with the ČHMÚ. I obtained other relevant information through cooperation with the South Bohemian HZS which provided the necessary cooperation needed to prepare this plan. It mainly included information needed to analyze external threat. Then I analyzed the internal risks which could interfere with the function of the entity and thus performance of tasks from the regional emergency plan. At this stage it was necessary to examine the University College and Canteen buildings. When analyzing the risks I came to a conclusion that the operation of the South Bohemian University Colleges and Canteens may be discontinued by the following hazards: natural floods (only in the case of Colleges K5 and K6), special floods, road transport of dangerous substances, risks resulting from climatic conditions (snow calamity and long-lasting frosts, storms, hurricanes, torrential rains), building fires, gas leaks (endangering the buildings of Colleges K1, K2, K3 and Canteens where gas is used for cooking appliances), power supply failure, heat supply failure and failures in the supply of food and water. The thesis findings can serve not only to deal with crisis situations but they can also be used by South Bohemian University students as a source of information or a basis for other work aimed at e.g. creating suitable conditions and environment for communication with people affected by the crisis situation who were forced to leave their homes and temporarily stay in the buildings of the University Colleges and Canteens. As these events cause pressure on human mind it is necessary to provide assistance to these people.

Security of citizens is one of the fundamental responsibilities of the state. Therefore, the crisis management system in the Czech Republic is one of the forms of the population protection guaranteed by the state. During its creation and operation cooperate appropriate bodies of the public administration, as well as legal and natural persons. In this thesis the readiness of smaller administrative units is assessed, such as municipality type I. (a municipality), municipality type II. (a municipality with authorized authority ) and especially municipality type III. (a municipality with extended scope). Despite the fact that the crisis management system in the Czech Republic is constantly evolving and is also supported by the legislative side, it is largely neglected at lower levels. Activities in this area are in many cases either postponed or in worse cases considered completely useless and their implementation will not take place. In relation with the exceptional situations the municipal authorities were entrusted with certain powers to deal with such situations. But on the other hand, different levels of municipalities are not distinguished in the cases of dealing with crisis situations. Problems arise in the areas of expertise, material and human resources, especially when the municipalities type I. do not have such resources to be capable of adequately respond in the event of a crisis situation. After all, there are better conditions in municipalities with extended scope, which are able, also due to the larger budgets within its administrative area, to ensure better crisis preparedness of municipality to an exceptional or crisis situation and its subsequent solutions associated with minimizing damages and eliminate the consequences of the action of an exceptional or crisis situation.The main objective of this thesis is to characterize the crisis management system in the Czech Republic. With the help of legislation and professional literature the theoretical part is focused on the explanation of basic terms, such as crisis management, a system of integrated rescue system, emergency and crisis planning, characteristics of the exceptional and crisis situation or crisis management authorities. Furthermore, the thesis is focused on the field of crisis management at the level of municipalities with extended scope, which describes both the scope and the various municipal bodies. It addresses the individual procedures of primarily smaller local government units in the prevention of municipality preparation for exceptional situations, participation of municipality on rescue and relief works and operations implemented in connection with the population protection. At last, the theoretical part contains the financial security operations related to the preparation of exceptional or crisis situations and to the rescue and relief work implementation.To meet the objectives of the thesis were established two research questions that address both the preparedness of humanitarian worker, as well as the possibility of drafting a proposal for a methodological procedure in dealing with crisis situation.

Exercising their profession, nursing staff in health facilities may commit a fatal mistake in tense moments in terms of time. An illustrious example may be the admission of a higher number of casualties after an emergency event. So that to prevent these negative consequences, emphasis is put on the readiness of the entire health system from the headquarters to individual care providers. Special attention is also paid to trauma planning, because especially in complex cases greater demands are developed on the functioning and rapid succession of individual operations of medical care, along with observing all approved medical principles, of course. To verify the readiness and to reveal any shortcomings and reserves tactical exercises are held. The Krnov hospital also participated in that kind of training with activating the trauma plan. Another workplace involved was also the radio-diagnostic department. A simulated bus accident was to reveal whether the individual workplaces could provide adequate examinations and treatment. The thesis is divided into several parts. In the introductory section it is explained in brief how the health system is organized. To understand the text, it was necessary to define the necessary terminology and to mention the binding, legal legislation for emergency management authorities at all levels that affect the operations and carry out supervision on medical institutions. Gradually, the theoretical part presents trauma plans, sorting out casualties in the place of an emergency event, and specific exercises in the Krnov hospital that were announced and carried out in the early afternoon, when the hospital was fully filled with staff members. In the research part the analysis of a real accident that occurred in a late evening about a year later is made. Time demandingness of individual examinations is evaluated. Factual results are compared with the data obtained from simulated exercises. In the final part I tried to assess the quality and topicality of the trauma plan elaborated by our facility as well as the internal trauma plan of the RDG department and to propose possible changes and improvements.

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which community colleges have implemented major post-Virginia Tech campus safety recommendations. In addition to gaining a comprehensive overview of the safety policies and practices in place, this study assessed if campus safety policy implementation levels at the community colleges correlated with institutional characteristics, and the internal and external forces that helped drive the implementation of these policies. Focusing specifically upon the Virginia Community College System, data on the policies and practices in place at each of the 23 Virginia community colleges were collected from institutional websites and through follow-up telephone calls. Interviews were then conducted with a small group of administrators from various Virginia community colleges. Analysis of the data indicated that large variance exists across the community colleges, as some have implemented most of the major campus safety recommendations that currently exist, while other have only implemented far less. The results also revealed potential support for larger community colleges with more resources and more campuses implementing more campus safety recommendations. Interview data detailed that external mandates and internal college leadership are the most important forces driving campus safety policy change among the community colleges. A number of policy implications arose regarding where community colleges need to improve their campus safety and how to best drive campus safety policy changes in the future.

The world is facing an increase in natural disasters due to climate change, and Sweden is no exception. In the past 10 years Sweden has endured two large forest fires which devastated both land and property and which had huge financial impacts on society. Learning from such disasters is an important task for the crisis management system since learning is vital to be able to both prevent, prepare for, and manage new disasters. By conducting a qualitative in-depth analysis of the post-crisis learning process after the forest fire in 2014, this study aims to examine how actors learn from disasters as well as provide insight into the post-crisis organisational learning process in general. The actions of the Swedish Government and Parliament is evaluated by linking organisational learning to policy change, in such that for learning in the post-crisis management to have happened, the actor needs to have both identified lessons from the disaster, as well as implemented these into policy. In this study a text analysis is conducted on the two inquiries ordered by the Government after the fire to determine the “lessons identified”, and a plethora of government documents is analysed to ascertain whether the lessons identified have been acted upon and implemented into policy. It was found that the inquiries identified many valuable lessons, and that the authorities in most cases had implemented, or tried to implement, the lessons into policy. However, the protracted process of implementation, which led to some measures not being fully implemented until 2021, allowed new fires to occur before the issues were remedied. It is therefore argued that the efficiency of the Swedish Government’s post-crisis learning process should perhaps be questioned.

<div>Real-time social media data can provide useful information on evolving events and situations. In addition, various domain users are increasingly leveraging real-time social media data to gain rapid situational awareness. Informed by discussions with first responders and government officials, we focus on two major barriers limiting the widespread adoption of social media for situational awareness: the lack of geotagged data and the deluge of irrelevant information during events. Geotags are naturally useful, as they indicate the location of origin and provide geographic context. Only a small portion of social media is geotagged, however, limiting its practical use for situational awareness. The deluge of irrelevant data provides equal difficulties, impeding the effective identification of semantically relevant information. Existing methods for short text relevance classification fail to incorporate users' knowledge into the classification process. Therefore, classifiers cannot be interactively retrained for specific events or user-dependent needs in real-time, limiting situational awareness. In this work, we first adapt, improve, and evaluate a state-of-the-art deep learning model for city-level geolocation prediction, and integrate it with a visual analytics system tailored for real-time situational awareness. We then present a novel interactive learning framework in which users rapidly identify relevant data by iteratively correcting the relevance classification of tweets in real-time. We integrate our framework with the extended Social Media Analytics and Reporting Toolkit (SMART) 2.0 system, allowing the use of our interactive learning framework within a visual analytics system adapted for real-time situational awareness.</div>