ASSIGNMENT OBJECTIVES:
The assignment will be used to evaluate the student's knowledge and skills in implementing and coordinating comprehensive plans for mitigation that is needed to effectively deal with actual or potential emergencies, and disasters including the Business Continuity Management, in their organisations for this challenging and demanding role.

ASSIGNMENT QUESTION:
The number and impact of various natural and technology disaster (man-made) has been rising in recent decades, it is anticipated that such events will continue to increase in the future. The challenges facing strategic emergency managers are likely to be more complex in the future due to the likelihood of increased frequency, intensity and duration of emergency events. The possibility of facing threats and devastating consequences after the 2014 worst flood in the East Coast States was considered to be a ‘tsunami-like disaster' and followed the experience of Sabah's earthquake in 2015 raise several questions about the future preparedness and mitigations of the country disaster management as well as the business continuity preparation for every organisation to effectively deal with large disasters, mass casualties and shut down of critical functions and services.

Due to this, thousands of people were displaced and businesses come to a standstill. Inaccessibility by the communities, rescue teams and relief agency operations to many basic services during the disaster was unexplainable. Many basic infrastructures like roads, water supplies, schools, offices, hospitals, business communities etc. were damaged and crippled. In today's environment everyone depends with greater reliance on critical infrastructures. Banks, offices and even TNB power stations were affected. Businesses become unstable and badly affected the entire stakeholders.

On the other hand there is also increasing pressure to provide seamless lateral and hierarchical delivery of services and real time information to an increasing variety of communities and stakeholders. The implications for strategic emergency management increase the interdependencies in decision making within and between teams. Such major events have brought the issue of needs for holistic disaster management and Business Continuity Management (BCM) as in NSC Directive No.20. They now realise that they need to take steps to minimise loss of live and property and minimise the risk of disruptions to the normal business process and organisation's supply chain and to improve the chances that their business would survive such incidents and continue to operate, deliver an acceptable level of customer service and generate income. The two emergency phases (pre-event), Mitigation and Preparedness must be well planned and coordinated across all relevant agencies, including the governments and private organisations.

1. Business Continuity Management (BCM) is crucial to the survival and sustainability of the organisation in any emergency or disaster event, especially to take them through the initial impacts of a major disruption to beyond the first hours - all the way through and its aftermath to the restoration of operation. Based on the above scenario explains the concepts, structure, and challenges of the BCM implementation for the organisations.
(40 marks)

2. Malaysia's model of Disaster Management is based on NSC Directive No.20 which focuses on holistic approach in managing disaster in the country. The mitigation and preparedness phases (also referred as pre-event) occur as disaster management improvements are made in anticipation of a disaster event. Developmental considerations play a key role in contributing to the mitigation and preparation of the government, organisations and communities and people to effectively confront a disaster. Analyse and discuss in detail how will you strategically incorporate appropriate mitigation measures and preparedness programmes to strengthen the technical and managerial capacity of government, organisations and communities in response to the above scenario.

QUESTION 1

Identification and analysis of  organisational impacts on critical systems and  its business processes that were required to continue and explore basic strategies employed to safeguard systems maintaining continuity of systems that support business operations.

Discussion on the implementation of business continuity plans and processes.

Mechanics of writing

QUESTION 2

Definition and deliberation of the two phases of emergency management (pre event) and description of activities associated with each of them.

Discussion on the interrelationships between mitigation and preparedness  at the district, state and federal levels together with the plans of action for when the disaster strikes.

Conclusion