In March 2006, the Federal interagency community released its updated fifteen all-hazards planning scenarios entitled the “National Planning Scenarios” or NPS. NPS are planning tools that are representative of the range of potential terrorist attacks and natural disasters and the related impacts that face our nation. The objective of the NPS was to develop a minimum number of credible scenarios in order to establish the range of response requirements to facilitate preparedness planning at the Federal level.

NPS were used in the implementation of Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-8, “National Preparedness,” including the development of the National Preparedness Goal and National Exercise Program (NEP). In helping to develop the National Preparedness Goal, NPS provided the foundation for identifying the capabilities across all mission areas and the target levels of those capabilities needed for effective prevention, response, and recovery to major events, such as those outlined in the NPS.

While documents like NPS, the National Preparedness Directive, and National Preparedness Goal constitute the foundation of planning and preparedness for Federal planners, very few foundational documents exist for our Nation’s most vulnerable citizens: our children.

With that in mind, I propose (in draft form) the following Campus Emergency Planning Scenarios (CEPS), sorted by natural hazards and man-made hazards:

In the perfect world, each school would have an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) with hazard-specific annexes (taken from the aforementioned CEPS). Schools would design and develop plans that include protective measures, pre-scripted public information products, initial actions, coordination requirements, and tactical-level checklists for the incident commander and campus ICS positions.

While many schools may have plans for one or several of the CEPS hazards, few schools have comprehensive emergency management programs that address all of the CEPS hazards. By developing industry-accepted Campus Emergency Planning Scenarios, schools and school districts might be prompted to develop plans, policies, procedures, and protocols for preparing for, responding to, and recovering from the hazards in CEPS. Based on CEPS, perhaps school administrators would be motivated to reach consensus on designing and developing a campus preparedness goal, campus preparedness system/framework, or even lobbying the Secretary of the US Department of Education to release a Campus Preparedness Directive.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, the scenarios I propose are in draft form and I would greatly appreciate any comments, feedback, or suggested changes.