NFPA 1600 2019 Edition Published

The 2019 edition of NFPA 1600 “Standard on Continuity, Emergency, and Crisis Management” has been published by the National Fire Protection Association. This international standard is the most mature standard of its kind in the world. Originally published in 1995, the 2019 edition is the 7^th edition. It addresses the inter-connected elements of a preparedness program including program management, risk assessment, business impact analysis, prevention/mitigation, emergency management, business continuity, crisis management, and crisis communications.

First off, the title has changed to emphasize “crisis” management content that has been introduced over the past three editions. A crisis is defined as “an issue, event, or series of events with potential for strategic implications” including impacts on brand, image, reputation, and more. A new section “crisis management” has been added to chapter 6, Implementation. This section defines a “crisis management capability,” with senior leadership involvement, signals detection, identification of issues, strategy development, and more.

Another notable change is the addition of a new chapter 7 titled “Execution.” It defines what should be obvious but is often overlooked, that is, how a program should be executed. Incident recognition, reporting and notification, activation and planning, incident management, documentation, and resource management are included in the new chapter. The chapter extracts the important elements of alerting, notification, and warning with activation of an incident management system.

The annexes, which are a treasure trove of valuable information, continue to expand. Annex J, “Social Media in Emergency Management” has been added. When an incident occurs, social media is alive before emergency, continuity, and crisis management responders are fully engaged. Therefore, integrating social media into all program activities—preparedness for a forecast event to communicating with stakeholders regarding continuity and recovery information after—is a must.

Other new annexes include Annex K Emergency Communications: Public Alerts and Warnings in Disaster Response and Annex L Emergency Management, Continuity, and Crisis Management Data Interoperability.

NFPA 1600 can be downloaded for free from the NFPA website http://bit.ly/2AOTiFF

Check out a historical review of NFPA 1600 on the Preparedness, LLC website. http://bit.ly/2UcLzt9. Be sure to download the 2019 edition of Preparedness, LLC’s program self-assessment checklist, which is based on NFPA 1600. http://bit.ly/2uUz7ma