Implementation of recommendations from IGEM system-wide reviews | Progress Report 2020
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4.4 Review of impact assessment and consequence management Recommendation 1 RECOMMENDATION
STATUS
The Inspector-General for Emergency Management recommends that Emergency Management Victoria, in liaison with producers and users of impact assessment data, coordinate a thorough analysis of the fundamental purposes of impact assessment.
Ongoing
This activity should aim to produce, publish and share the following outputs:
a needs analysis for impact assessment that describes the specific purposes of impact assessment and identifies the data, metrics and timeframes required to adequately serve these purposes sets of core impact data that should be prioritised for urgent collection in Class 1 and Class 2 emergencies agreed reporting metrics including consideration of the use of ranges or caveats where timelines for urgent and specific data are unrealistic updated impact assessment guidelines and related emergency management manuals for all emergencies that outline the data collection, reporting and sharing responsibilities of all organisations across the sector agreed reporting metrics to inform relief and recovery (both short and long-term) efforts information-sharing guidelines through consideration of personal and nonpersonal data sharing across all tiers in both Class 1 and Class 2 emergencies.
IGEM considers this activity to be a priority that will rationalise ongoing and future activities aimed to produce an end-to-end impact assessment process.
The Impact Assessment and Consequence Management Review found that the specific purposes of impact assessment are not clearly articulated and understood across the sector. To address this, the review recommended that EMV coordinates a thorough analysis of the fundamental purposes of impact assessment. The government’s response to the Impact Assessment and Consequence Management Review supported the recommendation in-principle, acknowledging that data collection and sharing of impact assessment information has often lacked standardisation and effective coordination across agencies and organisations. The government response committed to making improvements through EMV's EM-Impact Program which aims to develop a set of shared tools and associated guidance materials for organisations required to conduct initial impact assessments and secondary impact assessments. The EM-Impact Program comprises the following three connected projects:
Resilience Dashboard – involves collating community resilience data to create a baseline to contextualise damage assessments after an emergency, inform recovery planning, and help evaluate the outcomes of recovery initiatives.
Needs Assessment – involves a process and products for use by responder agencies and other organisations to assess individual and community recovery needs.
Impact Assessment – involves developing online reporting and visualisation tools for initial and secondary impact assessments, defining emergency impact metrics and assigning data collection responsibilities across the emergency management sector.
