5 Critical Steps To Create an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) At Your School

Step 3: Identify Threats, Hazards and Risks

Effective school planning depends on a consistent analysis and comparison of the threats and hazards a particular school faces. The planning team should draw on their own knowledge of threats in addition to reaching out to state and local authorities about historical threats and hazards faced by the surrounding communities.

Next the team should evaluate the risk posed by each threat, taking into account its probability of happening, its impact, the time the school will have to warn the community and specific campus vulnerabilities. Local officials should be able to provide information on many of the threats, so school officials can focus on the things that could make their campus more susceptible to each threat.

This could involve site assessments, behavioral threat assessments, climate assessments (evaluating student and staff connectedness to the school and its problems) and capacity assessments (evaluating the capabilities of students and stand as well as the services and resources of community partners. Equipment and supplies should also be inventoried).