Antiviral – A drug or class of medication used specifically for treating viral infections.
Business Continuity Program – An ongoing process supported and funded by senior management to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to identify and respond to an emergency situation. This should include: recognizing potential losses, maintaining viable recovery strategies and plans, and ensuring the continuity of services through personnel training, response testing and plan maintenance.
CBRN - An acronym for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear, where:
• Chemical - Poisoning or injury caused by chemical substances including classical chemical warefare agents or misuse of legitimate but harmful household or industrial chemicals.
• Biological – Illness caused by the deliberate release of bacteria, viruses or fungi, or biological toxins.
• Radiological (radioactive) – Illness caused by exposure to harmful radioactive materials contaminating the environment, inhaled, or ingested in food or drink.
• Nuclear – explosion of a nuclear device causes widespread effects due to the blast, heat, and radiological contamination, as well as large amounts of harmful radiation.
Continuity plan - Identifies the critical and time-sensitive applications, vital records, processes and functions that need to be maintained, and identifies the necessary personnel and processes.
Damage Assessment – An appraisal or determination of the effects of the disaster on human, physical, economic and natural resources.
Disaster – The impact of a natural or man-made hazard that negatively affects society or environment. Disasters occur when hazards strike in vulnerable areas.
Disaster/Emergency Management Program – A program that implements the mission, vision and strategic goals and objectives, as well as the management framework of the program and organization.
Emergency - A situation that poses an immediate threat to human life or serious damage to property or environment.
Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) – The central command and control facility/group responsible for carrying out the principles of emergency preparedness and emergency management functions at a strategic level in an emergency situation, and ensuring the continuity of vital operations.
Impact Analysis – A management level analysis that identifies the impact of losing the entity’s resources. The analysis measures the effect of resource loss and escalating losses over time in order to provide the entity with reliable data upon which to base decisions concerning hazard mitigation, recovery strategies and continuity planning.
Incident Management System – A method of command and control that provides a means to coordinate parts of one agency or many agencies towards the goal of responding to an incident and protecting life, property and the environment.
Influenza Pandemic - An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.
H5N1 – a severe strain of avian influenza (bird flu) that has killed millions of birds, especially poultry, in many coutries and has resulted in some human illness and death.
Hazard - General term for a wide range of phenomena that pose a threat to humans, human society and human populations.
Mitigation – Efforts that attempt to prevent hazards from developing into disasters or to reduce the effects of disasters when they occur. This includes the activities taken to eliminate or reduce the probability of the event, or reduce its severity or consequences, either prior to or following a disaster/emergency. A Mitigation plan will establish interim and long-term actions to eliminate hazards.
Mutual Aid Agreement – A pre-arranged agreement developed and implemented prior to a disaster/emergency that is used to enhance the mitigation of, response to and recovery from disasters/emergencies.
Pandemic - A global disease outbreak, over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) - Specialized clothing or equipment that are used by workers to protect against hazards in the environment. Examples are masks, respirators, and gloves.
Recovery plan – A plan developed to identify short-term and long-term priorities, processes, vital resources, and time frames for restoration of the business.
Response - the mobilization of the necessary emergency services and first responders in the disaster area.
Risk Assessment - A systematic process for the identification and quantification of the potential risk of a hazard which could have harmful effects to services, staff, ‘customers’, or society. A risk assessment is a step in the risk management process, whereby a hazard is measured for two quantities: the magnitude of the potential loss and the probability that the event will occur.
Surge Capacity – the ability to expand beyond normal operations and obtain additional resources when needed to respond to an emergency or increased demand.
Vaccine - A preparation that contains an antigen, consisting of whole disease-causing organisms (killed or weakened) or parts of such organisms, that is used to confer immunity against the disease that the organisms cause.