According to today’s Times the field of emergency management is burgeoning in the U.S. There are 144 college programs offering degrees in the field, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will be 28,000 emergency management specialists by 2012. What is the source of growth in the profession? The article cites increases in disaster losses in recent years, but does not discuss the source of this increase. Are communities more vulnerable to disaster? Are disasters more expensive to manage? Or are governments more inclined to declare events to be emergencies?
COLLABORATORY: VITAL SYSTEMS SECURITY
The Vital Systems Security collaboration examines how, today, security is being constituted as an object of knowledge, intervention, and political reflection. It proposes that the security of vital systems such as energy, transportation, communication and health is one norm in relationship to which security is being reproblematized. A central goal of the collaboration is to examine these issues through collective, conceptually driven inquiry that addresses rapidly developing contemporary problems.
The article quotes Wayne Blanchard, who has written a history of civil defense, and has been a project manager at FEMA’s Emergency Management Higher Education Project: http://www.training.fema.gov/emiweb/edu/
The turning point was, not surprisingly, 9/11. Katrina and the threat of pandemic flu also made the point. The structural reasons for the ascendancy of emergency management lie of course elsewhere.