Question:
Discuss the unique characteristics and risk landscape of the Transportation Systems and Emergency Services sectors. How should the public and private sectors be coordinated to assist in securing these sectors?
Instructions: Fully utilize the materials that have been provided to you in order to support your response. Please respond to at least two other students. Responses should be a minimum of 150 words and include direct questions. You may challenge, support or supplement another student’s answer using the terms, concepts and theories from the required readings. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process at this academic level.
Forum posts are graded on timeliness, relevance, knowledge of the weekly readings, and the quality of original ideas. Sources utilized to support answers are to be cited in accordance with the APA writing style by providing a general parenthetical citation (reference the author, year and page number) within your post, as well as an adjoining reference list. Refer to grading rubric for additional details concerning grading criteria.
Answer:
Introduction:
Transportation system is an all pervasive sector that bothers every citizen in some way or the other since industrial transactions, food products, medicines and other essentials for daily sustenance (DHS, Transportation Sector Specific Plan, 2017). Transportation sector has huge influence on the community, industry, business and other sectors and therefore I agree with student response 1 in claiming it to be a vast sector. Transport sector can be considered as the ultimate medium for enhancing cross cultural communication and exchanges and can facilitate education level amongst the people and therefore it needs to be maintained against potential threats towards its infrastructure. The system should be maintained in order to encourage free movement of people that can also result in sharing ideas, views and information, Transportation Security Sharing Environment should work for an improved medium of sharing, assessing threats, reporting security concerns and thwart accidents. In this case both natural and man-made accidents should be taken into consideration such as flooding or lack of planning in infrastructure leading to collapse of bridges (DHS, Transportation Sector Specific Plan, 2017).
The next sector, Emergency Service Sector, success of which depends on their capacity for prevention and response to emergency situations and crisis. The sector is dispersed along 50 states catering with over 2.5 million members and professionals. Resourcefulness of this sector plays a key role in improving its functionality during serious crisis. The ESS disciplines are mainly composed of law enforcement, fire and emergency, medical services and public works and both the responses lack in providing adequate information to maintain these sectors (DHS, Emergency Services Sector Specific Plan, 2017). ESS can ask for support from multiple sectors lie state, local and territorial level of government to provide optimum services to community with its diverse organizations and missions. There is the presence of role of communication and complex equation of security that this sector is responsible for with prior development of tools and ingratiation of resources that would be helpful in controlling risks (An Annex to the NIPP 2013, 2015). The sector also has specific goals and objectives pertaining to their work as well as ensuring smooth flow of information to support operational activities.
Bibliography List:
DHS. (2017, June 22). Emergency Services Sector Specific Plan. Retrieved from Department of Homeland Secuity: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/nipp-ssp-emergency-services-2015
DHS. (2017, July 6). Transportation Sector Specific Plan. Retrieved from Department of Homeland Security: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/nipp-ssp-transportation-systems-2015