Measuring and improving readiness of emergency organizations

Any organization whose primary purpose is to deal with emergencies must make the two related decisions: (1) Preparedness: How much money to spend in advance, and how to spend it to be prepared for likely emergencies, and (2) Response: How to spend money and allocate resources when an emergency occurs so as to respond quickly.; The readiness budget problem is concerned with both deciding upon the appropriate trade-off between the two, and given an allocation of funds, how to most efficiently perform (1) and (2).; A particular aspect of both the Preparedness and Response components that we concentrate on in this work is training. We look in particular at the trade-offs among: (1a) spending money continuously over time to maintain a highly trained and prepared organization; versus (1b) spending a lump sum now to have a fast response system; versus (2) incurring costs of slow response and training when an emergency occurs.; We apply the term "train-up problem" to the specific problem of deciding how to train the people in an organization to a specific level of readiness in the shortest time, given an available budget and facilities. When an emergency occurs, the budget in the train-up problem is less important and quick response is important. During non-emergency times, efficient use of limited funds is more important.; We analyze a number of subsidiary questions. How accurate are current train-up time estimates? Can we do anything simple to improve these estimates? How much can readiness be improved by better non-emergency scheduling? How does readiness change with a change in the budget? How does readiness change as the capacity of various physical facilities are changed?; We give a detailed case study of an Army tank battalion. We show it is possible to use optimization to determine a train-up schedule. We show how readiness for the tank battalion is affected by changes in budget and capacity. We also discuss assumptions and constraints imposed by military planners and show how these affect train-up time.