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44 Maintaining Emergency Response Capability Assessments To make the process outlined in this Guide viable in the long term, a maintenance component is required. You could employ two approaches: 1. Periodically resurvey the response teams and key information sources to reflect new response capabilities or needs. If this approach is chosen, the data should be refreshed at least annually. 2. Perform real-time management, particularly of response capabilities, where equipment pur- chases and updates to responder training records would be coordinated at the planning agency level and linked to a database system that updates and records current capability levels. Response planning organizations should require response teams to provide the necessary data to support capability assessment to be eligible for hazmat-specific response planning, training, or equipment funding through the state on an annual basis. This could include PHMSAâs Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness (HMEP) Grant funding as well as internal state funding. Sharing Emergency Response Capability Assessments As for aggregating the results for larger jurisdictions, a national repository should be devel- oped for response team information and capability data. The most appropriate location for this repository is the Hazardous Materials Fusion Center, led by the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) in cooperation with PHMSA. Such a repository was envisioned in the creation of the Fusion Center. If the response capability assessment data discussed earlier were captured at the national level, great economies of scale would result when those data were accessed and used by a number of jurisdictions at varying levels, from neighboring counties, states, or industrial entities. A reciprocal arrangement, in which a planning agency could access the national data if the agency provided the data for its jurisdiction, would help promote wider use and utility of a national repository. In the absence of a national repository, consider working directly with neighboring jurisdictions to share the results of your work. The hazmat stored in your jurisdiction, and particularly those moving through it, would be relevant to an adjacent jurisdictionâs response planning agency. Conversely, you might learn more about what is moving from that jurisdiction into yours from the results of their hazard survey efforts. C H A P T E R 1 0 Sustaining the Process