McGraw-Hill 2012 Homeland Security Handbook

The 2012 edition of the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook is scheduled for publication late in 2012. Donald L Schmidt, CEO of Preparedness, LLC, once again has authored a chapter on Corporate Emergency Management.

This handbook aims to foster an integrated and coordinated approach to homeland security, emergency management, and enterprise resilience. The Handbook has several important features:

• The 2012 edition of the Handbook provides extensive thematic coverage, offering an opportunity to understand how homeland security challenges are interconnected. As pointed out in the foreword to the 2006 edition, only a team of individuals with genuine crosscutting knowledge and practical experience will be able to understand the complexity of any particular homeland security challenge, devise an efficient and viable strategy for dealing with the problem, and implement this strategy effectively.
• The contributors include distinguished members of government, industry, and academia, many of whom combine theory with practical experience in homeland security and are active in educating the next generation of national security leaders.
• As no country has a monopoly on best practices, this edition has an expanded section on international approaches, with perspectives and insights from past disasters.
• This edition includes management principles, models, concepts, and specific practical guidance. Many chapters present practical steps that security, emergency preparedness, and business continuity professionals can apply immediately to create vigilant, prepared, and resilient communities and business enterprises.
• The book emphasizes the importance of systems thinking, holistic interoperability, and information sharing protocol development. The need for this emphasis stems from the reality that, since the last edition was published, the world has witnessed numerous occasions when poor information sharing and coordination undermined counterterrorism defenses and crisis consequence management following catastrophic natural disasters.
• The book covers recent homeland security policy developments, such as Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8) with National Frameworks for Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery.

The website at www.HomelandSecurityBook.com provides valuable resources for further study.