The Office of Emergency Management is in the process of updating its Five Year Strategic Plan that details the strategic direction for enhancing UMass capabilities and capacities aimed at assisting the campus achieve its mission of education, research and public service by enhancing safety, resistance and resilience throughout.
Vision
Create a disaster resilient University.
Disaster resilience, as UMass defines it, is the ability to prevent and protect members of the campus community and campus assets against natural or human-caused hazards, to effectively respond to such hazards, and to expeditiously recover and reconstitute educational, research and public services with minimum disruption to the UMass community.
Mission
The Office of Emergency Management mission is to provide the following:
- Oversight, coordination, and leadership for the promotion of activities and services that reduce or eliminate risk to people and property from incidents or events and their effects (prevention/mitigation);
- To adequately prepare the University, through the use of emergency planning efforts and training (preparedness); to ensure that emergencies will be responded to effectively, minimizing the loss of lives and property damage (response); and
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To ensure that business continuity and system recovery plans are in place, so that recovery efforts can begin immediately after the emergency, ensuring return of systems and business activities (recovery)
Overall Goals
- Employ an integrated all-hazards approach for prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery planning for UMass.
- Provide oversight, communication and coordination for UMass all-hazard emergency management and business continuity programs.
- Promote campus understanding and utilization of the Incident Command System and National Incident Management System.
- Enhance disaster preparedness capabilities through creating training and exercising opportunities.
- Enhance internal and external channels of communication.
- Ensure the University stays informed of federal, state and local regulations/changes that affect emergency management and business continuity planning.
- Address sustainability considerations in all endeavors and ensure that strategies are measurable.