Civil Protection Planning

A civil protection plan is the series of intervention operative procedures to cope with any expected calamity in a particular territory.

Civil protection plan assimilates the forecasting and prevention plan and is the instrument which allows the authorities to prepare and coordinate the relief interventions to protect the population and the heritage in a risk area. It has the objective of guaranteeing the maintenance of life, thrown into turmoil by a situation which means serious physical and psychological discomfort, at “civil” levels by any means possible.

Structure of the plan. The plan consists of three fundamental parts:

1. General part: it includes all the information on the features and on the structure of the territory.
2. Lines of planning: they establish the objectives to achieve in order to provide a suitable civil protection response to any emergency situation, and the skills of the various operators.
3. Intervention model: assigns the decision making responsibilities to the various levels of command and control, uses the resources in a rational manner, defines a communication system which allows a constant exchange of information.

Objectives of the plan.  A civil protection plan is a document that:

• assigns the responsibility to the organisations and to the individuals to perform specific actions, planned in time and in places, in an emergency which exceeds the capacity of response or the competence of a single organisation;
• describes how the actions and the relations between organisations are coordinated;
• describes how to protect the people and property in emergency and disaster situations;
• identifies the personnel, the equipment, the skills, the funds and the other resources available to use during the response operations;
• identifies the initiatives to be established to improve the living conditions of any people evacuated from their homes.

The document is constantly updated, since it has to take account of the evolution of the territorial layout and of the variations in the expected scenarios. Drills also contribute to updating the plan because they confirm the content of the plan and assesses the operating and managerial capacity of the personnel. The training actually helps the personnel to be employed in an emergency to better perform during an emergency.

A plan must be sufficiently flexible to be used in all the emergencies, including unexpected ones, and simple enough to be implemented rapidly.