CONCEPT: Emergency Toolkit

Emergency Toolkit: A toolkit is more than one tool. It is a combination (collection, array or repertoire) of tools. In the context of emergency and disaster management, a combination of complementary tools is used to respond to or preempt or otherwise manage all the interrelated components of the critical event in question. But, given the practical challenges typically faced in emergency situations, there will probably be frequent need for something bigger than a kit -- that is, something like a toolchest, or a container, or even a convoy of container-loads.

Thus, broadly speaking, the term tool refers to a range of practical resources: technologies – hardware, software and orgware (and even spiritware) – systems, processes, methods, procedures ("How Tos"), templates, standards, indicators, questionnaires, checklists, guidelines, forms, formats, formulae, plans, blueprints, manuals, records, reports and references.

An emergency toolkit is therefore a basket of emergency management resources available for use by specialized staff and others involved in the various stages of an emergency: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

In an Emergency Toolkit Laboratory of one kind or another, participants are called upon to scrutinize, open up, dissect, dismantle, unpack (= disassemble, take apart or un-bundle in a controlled way), test, tinker with, experiment with and/or repackage (= re-assemble in a value-adding way) high-value resources.

Furthermore, lab participants endeavour to:
(a) catalogue and describe the tools that we can identify from our readings, discussions or experiences;

(b) "un-package" available tools and critically evaluate them as a preamble to modifying them or re-packaging them, or coming up with better or entirely new ones; and

(c) following all that, put together various toolkits and specify their uses based on (or in relation to) certain emergency scenarios that they (the participants) concurrently develop, or cases that they cite, interrogate and draw informed inference from.

Note:
1. Orgware = the organizational contexts and/or ownership claims attached to specific tools or technologies of interest.
2. Spiritware = The spiritual dimensions, preconditions and/or connotations that emergency actors of one kind or another may attach to certain technologies or their use thereof.