An emergency can occur at any time, suddenly and without warning. Proper planning is essential to minimize the impact of any emergency on the university community, operations, and facilities.
The Campus Emergency Operations Plan is designed to provide DePaul University with a management tool to facilitate a timely, effective, efficient, and coordinated emergency response to significant events affecting the campus or its population. It is based on integrating DePaul University emergency response resources with those of other government and emergency response agencies.
The Campus Emergency Operations Plan does not replace existing emergency procedures but supplements them by defining the relationships between those and other procedures and organizations to build a unified command structure.
Emergency management consists of four continuous stages:
Mitigation
This stage includes activities designed to reduce or eliminate risks to persons or property or to lessen the actual or potential effects or consequences of an incident. Mitigation measures may be implemented prior to, during, or after an incident. Mitigation measures are often informed by lessons learned from prior incidents. Mitigation involves ongoing actions to reduce exposure to, probability of, or potential loss from hazards. Measures may include analysis of hazard related data to determine where it is safe to build or locate temporary facilities. Mitigation can include efforts to educate the University community on measures they can take to reduce loss and injury.
Preparedness
Preparedness is a continuous process. Preparedness involves efforts at all levels to identify threats, determine vulnerabilities, educate and train the community and identify required resources. Preparedness is operationally focused on establishing guidelines, plans, procedures, protocols, and standards for planning, training and exercises, personnel qualification and certification, equipment certification, and publication management.
Response
Response includes activities that address the short-term and direct effects of an incident. It includes immediate actions to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs. Response also includes the execution of emergency operations plans and of mitigation activities designed to limit the loss of life, personal injury, property damage, and other unfavorable outcomes. As indicated by the situation, response activities include applying intelligence and other information to lessen the effects or consequences of an incident; increased security operations; and continuing investigations into the nature and source of the threat.
Recovery
Recovery incorporates the development, coordination, and execution of service- and site-restoration plans; the reconstitution of operations and services; long-term care and treatment of affected persons; additional measures for social, political, environmental, and economic restoration; evaluation of the incident to identify lessons learned; post incident reporting; and development of initiatives to mitigate the effects of future incidents.