Emergency Management Officer
What the work is
Coordinates, plans and manages the development and implementation of strategies, policies and programs to respond to and recover from disasters or emergency situations, such as floods, cyclones and biosecurity incidents.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Develops policies, strategic and operational plans and processes to respond to and recover from disasters or emergency situations
- Identifies and analyses key issues and their impact on disaster risk reduction, emergency management, policies and response capability
- Coordinates response activities to respond to and recover from disasters or emergency situations
- Establishes and manages networks to liaise on emergency preparedness, prevention and response and recovery operations from disasters or emergency situations
- Leads the development of recovery programs and activities to support the recovery of communities following a disaster or emergency situation
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a fictional regional emergency management office preparing for storm season. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A flood plan you wrote months ago works on the day and nobody has to improvise
- A town you helped through a disaster invites you back for the rebuild
- You bring three agencies into one room and they leave with a shared plan
Hard days
- Phones ring all night and you must make decisions with only half the facts
- Preparing for events everyone hopes will never happen, and not being thanked when they do not
- Competing agencies each sure that their priority should come first
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 149933, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.