ENGLISH COMPOSITION II
2014OCT ENC-102-OL011
Thomas Edison State College

Written Assignment # 5

Submitted: November 2, 2014

Mentor: Miriam Redcay

Assignment: Research Outline.

Research Outline
As a Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness student my research topic will focus on the implementation of the Post Incident Analysis (PIA) process to measure the effectiveness during the response to the incident. The result of this research is to suggest the importance of developing guide of line PIA to analyze record and share experiences from incidents response. These lessons learnt can be added to future planning and training exercises by the different agencies of emergency responders.
A literature review including recognize fire service textbooks, journals, magazines, online research and different reports was included to examine different Post Incident Analysis programs. The research used to accomplish this purpose by answering the following questions:
1) What is a Post Incident Analysis?
2) What incidents should be analyzed?
3) What information should be collected?
4) How can this information be used?
According to the Salt River Fire Department Operating Guidelines a “Post Incident Analysis (PIA) is the reconstruction of an incident to assess the chain of events that took place, and the methods used to control the incident, and how the actions of emergency personnel contributed to the eventual outcome. The main purpose of the PIA is to reinforce personnel actions and departmental procedures that are effective and to give management insight into how effectiveness of the department’s operations can be improved.”
Frank Montagna suggests “a PIA should be held after all incidents, not just when something goes wrong. Holding a PIA at incidents not only necessary when things went well this also allows inexperienced responders to learn from others responder’s experiences.” A Post Incident Analysis (PIA) should be conducted after every incident. After reviewing the Anatomy of a Major-Incident Postmortem a “well-designed postmortem process can be used to develop detailed action plans and serve as a solid building block in launching improvement to a response, and the implementation of the best practice framework which play a key role in minimizing response time.” an effective PIA should be consistent, timely and conducted by all key personal. A Post Incident analysis report must bee as part of the establish procedures and focus on lessons learnt and introduce as part of the analysis program of every emergency response agencies.
In my time in the U.S. Army, we normally conduct an After Action Review (AARs) for training exercises and operations and provide Army Regulation (AR) 11-33 states that “a standardized format to identify Unit identified problems with the commanders’ solution”. A PIA would benefit greatly if the following information can be gathered:
a) General Description of the incident
b) Dates, locations, and major participants
c) Significant issues
d) Limitations / Solutions
e) Discussion Lessons learned
f) Recommended action and responders feedback
As part of the review literature, the conclusion can be drawn that must emergencies