So where does Integrated Crisis Management (ICM) come from?
ICM has been developed from two well understood major incident response structures. The first is Integrated Emergency Management (IEM), developed in the UK for major incident management, in the 1980’s. Developed to address shortcomings identified after numerous Major Incident response failures.
It was recognised that organisations responding to significant major incidents was being adversely affected by each responding organisation having its own organisational priority, such as police, fire, ambulance and others such the military, coast guard, Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) or any responding agency depending on the type of major incident. While each organisational priority was valid, it was recognised time and time again in major incident debriefs that this did not create the right environment to create an integrated major incident response.
Most recent examples of this failure would include the Manchester bombing, where one agency adversely affected the overall outcome, by restricting medical aid to the victims. IEM requires each responding agency to come together at the earliest practical point in a major, in a process labelled as ‘over the bonnet’. This label describes exactly the requirement to find the nearest vehicle, to get the bonnet and agreed on an integrated operational plan, in the now, using the actual available resources. Not the resources you would like but the actual resources you have and can realistically rely on.
ICM is also underpinned by the Incident Command System or ICS as its known. ICS was developed in the late 1960’s and 1970’s in North America after several wildfires, leading to significant loss of life and property. Following incident reviews, it was established that response problems often related to communication and management deficiencies rather than lack of resources or tactical failure. ICS was developed to address these failings and was collaboratively developed to provide a consistent, integrated framework for the management of all incidents from small incidents to large, multi-agency emergencies, by providing clear command and control, response structures, accountability and major incident roles, that could be pre-trained across all responding organisations. ICS is the standard major incident response system globally.