Macquarie University

Crisis Management and Disaster Relief - PICT213

This unit explores the concept of national resilience. It identifies the role of government in preparing for, managing and recovering from a broad range of crises.
The unit begins with an overview of risk reduction strategies and introduces the concept of contingency planning. It then examines the various kinds of crisis response capabilities that government develop, including interagency and state-federal coordination procedures, interoperability of equipment and ADF domestic counterterrorism capabilities.
The unit then discusses emergency coordination and management in a variety of contexts, including natural disasters, a large-scale mass transit accident, a nuclear, chemical or biological incident, a viral epidemic, a terrorist attack and critical infrastructure failure. Finally, the unit examines planning for national resilience capacity, the ability to recover from unexpected and debilitating crises.
These potent threats to national security are outside the threat-centric concept of homeland security and require a more risk-based approach to planning and preparation. This unit complements PICT210, which covers the operational aspects of homeland security, and PICT211, which focuses on government and private sector national security strategy and policy