MEMA Introduces the Maryland Emergency Preparedness Program
The Maryland Emergency Management Agency is pleased to introduce the first iteration of the Maryland Emergency Preparedness Program (MEPP). The MEPP is an innovative, forward-thinking approach that sets the policy and strategy for comprehensive emergency preparedness and operations for the State of Maryland for today and into the future.
The Maryland Emergency Preparedness Program replaces the Comprehensive Emergency Management Program (CEMP), last updated in 2009, as the State’s overarching strategy for homeland security and emergency management preparedness and operations. This document represents a comprehensive all-hazards approach to specific capabilities within four mission areas: Prevention/Protection, Response, Recovery, and Mitigation. Each mission area will be guided by a separate, state-level interagency operations plan that identifies the coordinating structure and concept of operations to deliver the pre-defined capability set of the mission area. Capabilities are distinct, yet highly interdependent elements, which provide the means to accomplish missions, functions, or objectives through the execution of related tasks.
The heart of the MEPP is risk management, and preparedness is one tool the State uses to manage risk. Maryland is susceptible to a wide range of threats and hazards, and risk is a combination of the vulnerability of a community to threats and hazards, the impact that a threat or hazard would have on people, services, facilities and structures in the community, and the likelihood of a hazard resulting in an emergency condition that causes injury or damage. The Maryland Preparedness System, part of the MEPP, uses an 8-step process to continuously improve the State’s ability to manage risk by identifying, building, delivering, evaluating, and sustaining capabilities.
The Governor’s Core Goals for Homeland Security are an interagency, intergovernmental, and multi-disciplinary listing of priority areas; they focus on common-sense ways to improve and maintain security, with a focus on “daily use” projects and programs. The MEPP and the capabilities concept aligns with the Core Goals through either individual capabilities or as programs under a capability. The MEPP supports the Core Goals by providing a methodology for measuring the State’s progress towards building, maintaining, executing, and improving in all the mission areas of homeland security, making Maryland a Center of Preparedness Excellence.
The MEPP contemplates the “Whole Community” and encourages local jurisdictions to follow the lead of the State for emergency preparedness and operations. The MEPP acknowledges that effective planning must: be community-based, representing the whole population and its needs; include participation from all stakeholders in the community; include senior officials throughout the process to ensure both understanding and approval; and inform those with operational responsibilities what to do and why to do it, and to further instruct those outside the jurisdiction on how to provide support and what to expect.
The MEPP represents the pathway to creating a Resilient Maryland. Please look for additional planning products and guidance to support implementation of the MEPP.