Key Roles and Responsibilities in Emergency Response

The uptick in disasters means that increasingly teams must work well together throughout the lifecycle of an incident. But who should you tap to form a cohesive unit within the incident response organization?

If you’re not sure, read on to learn the key roles and responsibilities in emergency response.  

ISO 22320 outlines key roles and responsibilities in emergency response

The first place to turn when looking for the appropriate configuration in emergency response is industry best practice. And it doesn’t get any more consensus than international, best-practice standard ISO 22320.

Beyond outlining key roles and responsibilities in emergency response, ISO 22320 specifies requirements for command and control, information, coordination, and cooperation which provide the basics for effective command and control within an incident response organization.

Indeed, the purpose of ISO 22320 is to establish requirements for operational information for emergency management that define processes, systems of work, data capture, and management.

Such requirements support the process of command and control as well as coordination and cooperation, internally within the organization as well as externally with other parties.

Key roles and responsibilities within a command-and-control system

What then are the relevant roles and responsibilities for emergency response?

As prescribed by the standard, one role alone within the incident response organization should be identified as having the overall responsibility for command and control.

And that role is the incident commander.

As laid out in the standard, the incident commander role has the following responsibilities

• Initiate, coordinate, and take responsibility for all measures of incident response
• Set up an organization
• Consider the activation, escalation, and termination processes
• Identify and meet legal and other obligations

Further functions within the command-and-control structure

But as important as the incident commander is, that person can’t do it alone.

One of the most important responsibilities an incident commander will have, therefore, is delegating authorities within the command-and-control structure.

Of course, the question then turns to whom? What functions should be set up to facilitate the delegation of power?

The answer, here, depends on the scale of the incident. For instance, smaller, less complex incidents will require fewer roles and functions than larger, more complex incidents.

However, key roles and responsibilities should at least include the following:

1. Personnel, administration, and finance function
2. Situation awareness and planning function
3. Decision making and implementation (operation function)
4. Logistic function
5. Media and press function
6. Communications and transmission function
7. Liaison function (for responding between organizations, actors, and NGOs)
8. Alerting and contact function
9. Safety function

Levels of incident response

As noted, the number of functional staff depends on the complexity of the incident. But how to establish the complexity of the incident itself?

For these calculations, incident commanders won’t have to rely on mere intuition. That’s because ISO 22320 provides five levels of incident response.

What are they? The five levels of incident response include:

1. Level 1. Event can be dealt with by resources deployed on the initial predetermined response.
2. Level 2. Event can be dealt with by resources deployed solely by the affected organization.
3. Level 3. Event can be dealt with by resources deployed by the affected organization, supported by mutual aid assistance from neighboring organizations under normal arrangements.
4. Level 4. Event can be dealt with by resources deployed by the affected organization, supported by mutual assistance from organizations anywhere within the affected geographical jurisdiction.
5. Level 5. Covers the management of any incoming aid to help the organization respond to an event and will be facilitated by the affected government using the existing protocols used by bilateral treaties and international organizations.

What though do these roles do during an incident response? That’s where the command-and-control process comes in.

What does ISO 22320 say about the ongoing process? Download our comprehensive Guide to ISO 22320 to find out.