Life Safety First
Protect people before property, data, schedules, equipment, or financial interests.
Emergency Management, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Policy
Protect life first. Preserve the mission through disruption.
The JR Institute intends to prepare for emergencies, maintain critical operations, protect research and records, restore technology and facilities, and learn from every incident.
Developing Framework
This page presents a planned public standard. Final emergency plans, continuity priorities, communications systems, recovery objectives, alternate sites, and leadership assignments should be approved and tested before active operations.
Policy Purpose
Resilience begins before the emergency.
Severe weather, fire, utility failure, cyberattack, public-health events, hazardous releases, equipment loss, transportation disruption, or facility damage can interrupt critical work without warning.
The Institute should know what must continue, what can pause, who has authority, how people will communicate, and how systems will be restored safely.
Core Principles
Life safety, continuity, recovery, and accountability.
Clear Command
Define who leads, who communicates, who approves shutdowns, and who coordinates recovery.
Critical Functions
Identify services, systems, facilities, records, and research activities that cannot remain unavailable.
Redundancy
Build backup power, communications, data, suppliers, locations, and personnel into essential operations.
Tested Recovery
Verify that backups, procedures, contact lists, alternate facilities, and recovery systems actually work.
Continuous Improvement
Review drills and incidents, correct weaknesses, and update plans as conditions change.
Scope
This policy is intended to apply to emergencies and disruptions affecting people, facilities, laboratories, field operations, technology, communications, transportation, utilities, vendors, research, records, and public services.
Incident Command and Decision Authority
Emergency plans should define leadership roles, succession, activation thresholds, emergency spending authority, shutdown authority, liaison responsibilities, and coordination with public responders.
Roles should remain clear when senior leaders are unavailable, off site, or directly affected by the event.
Emergency Communications
The Institute should maintain redundant methods for warning, instruction, status reporting, family communication, public information, and coordination with staff, trustees, partners, vendors, and authorities.
- Mass notification and emergency contact systems
- Updated call trees and leadership contacts
- Alternate communication methods during outages
- Authorized public and media spokespersons
- Accessible messaging for people with disabilities
Evacuation, Shelter, Accountability, and Reentry
Facilities should have procedures for evacuation, shelter-in-place, lockdown, assembly, accountability, assistance for people with disabilities, and controlled reentry.
No person should reenter a restricted area to recover equipment, animals, records, or personal property unless authorized by emergency leadership.
Critical Operations and Recovery Priorities
Each major function should identify:
- Maximum tolerable downtime
- Minimum staffing and required skills
- Essential systems, records, vendors, and equipment
- Manual workarounds and alternate locations
- Dependencies on utilities, transportation, and communications
- Recovery sequence and decision authority
Research, Laboratory, and Collection Continuity
Continuity plans should address experiments, samples, specimens, freezers, environmental controls, animals, archives, participant contact, regulated materials, and time-sensitive observations.
Plans should define what must be stabilized, transferred, monitored remotely, backed up, safely terminated, or restarted only after review.
Technology, Data, and Disaster Recovery
Technology plans should define recovery priorities, backup locations, restoration procedures, identity management, communications, cybersecurity response, and validation before systems return to service.
Recovery-time and recovery-point objectives should reflect the importance of each system and the consequences of data loss or extended outage.
Facilities, Utilities, and Physical Infrastructure
Plans should address power, generators, fuel, water, heating, cooling, ventilation, fire protection, communications, elevators, access control, structural safety, and hazardous systems.
Alternate work locations and temporary operations should be evaluated for safety, security, accessibility, technology, insurance, and suitability for the intended activity.
Vendors, Contractors, and Supply-Chain Continuity
Critical suppliers should be identified with alternate sources where practical. Contracts may require continuity plans, emergency contacts, service priorities, data recovery, incident notification, and transition assistance.
Exercises, After-Action Review, and Corrective Action
The Institute should test emergency and continuity plans through drills, tabletop exercises, technical recovery tests, and facility simulations.
After incidents or exercises, responsible personnel should document what occurred, what worked, what failed, what remains unresolved, and who is accountable for corrective action.
Framework date: July 2026
Resilience Cycle
Prepare, respond, stabilize, recover, and improve.
- Prepare. Identify hazards, priorities, contacts, backups, alternates, and decision authority.
- Respond. Protect life, activate command, communicate, contain the event, and request assistance.
- Stabilize. Secure facilities, preserve evidence, protect critical assets, and stop further loss.
- Recover. Restore people, systems, facilities, research, records, and services in priority order.
- Improve. Review performance, correct weaknesses, retrain personnel, and update plans.
Emergency Planning Questions
Report continuity gaps, unsafe plans, failed systems, or unresolved recovery risks.
Inquiries may concern emergency communications, evacuation, alternate sites, technology recovery, research continuity, utilities, vendors, or post-incident corrective action.
Submit an Emergency Planning Inquiry
Identify the facility, system, function, hazard, date, continuity concern, and available supporting information.
Contact the Institute