Stress Adaptation Analytics

About

Background: In emergency management, after-action reporting methods can be lengthy, inconsistent, and require subjective interpretation. This can make it difficult for decision and policy makers in agencies responding to determine where improvements in preparedness and emergency response need to be made.   Technology: "Indicators for Stress Adaptation Analytics" (ISAAC) is a protocol which measures resource allocations and organizational stress within the public health system. The protocol shows changes in resource consumption during the course of a response as a local health department (LHD) adapts from normal to disaster and back again to normal mode. ISAAC defines five categories of stress ranging from minimal to maximum disruption of normal activities. Stress is defined as the degree of a response and its duration. ISAAC outputs are graphics that visually map stress over the response period.   Application: Used as an adaptive response metric that calibrates a standardized score of public health system agencies before, during, and after response to disasters such as wildfires and infectious disease outbreaks. This metric can then be utilized to better distribute resources during subsequent emergencies.   Advantages: 1. The ISAAC simulation provides a method for analyzing the interactive effects of personnel, budget, and structural changes involved in emergency response agencies. 2. ISAAC shows greater internal variation at the function level than is typically observed with organizational-level data. 3. The use of ISAAC to analyze many emergency responses over time can allow for the development of more complex response models that are both hazard and locality specific.   Stage of Development: Prototype   Publications: Schuh RG, Basque M, Potter MA. The Effects of Funding Change and Reorganization on Patterns of Emergency Response in a Local Health Agency. Public Health Reports. 2014;129(Suppl 4):166-172.