Emergency Management - National Organizations - New Zealand - Terminology

Terminology

New Zealand uses unique terminology for emergency management to the rest of the English-speaking world.

4Rs is the local emergency management cycle. In New Zealand, the four phases are known as:

• Reduction = Mitigation
• Readiness = Preparedness
• Response
• Recovery

Emergency management is rarely used locally; many government publications retain usage of the term civil defence. For example, the Minister of Civil Defence is responsible for central government's emergency management agency, MCDEM.

Civil Defence Emergency Management is a term in its own right. Often abbreviated as CDEM, it is defined by statute as the application of knowledge to prevent harm from disasters.

Disaster very rarely appears in official publications. In a New Zealand context, the terms emergency and incident usually appear when speaking about disasters in general. When describing an emergency that has had a response from the authorities, the term event is also used. For example, publications refer to the “Canterbury Snow Event 2002”