Innovative Emergency Management

Innovative Emergency Management (IEM) is a Baton Rouge, Louisiana-headquartered risk management company founded in 1985. It is headed by CEO Madhu Beriwal. IEM has eight offices strategically located around the United States. Their areas of specialty include: homeland security and emergency management, information technology, defense support, and program integration support.

On June 3, 2004 IEM was contracted by the Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency to support development of a catastrophic hurricane response plan for Southeast Louisiana, including the City of New Orleans. The contract award for this plan was approximately $500,000.

To develop the plan, IEM created a model of a simulated category 4~5 hurricane called Hurricane Pam and its associated consequences. The last exercise using "Hurricane Pam" was conducted on August 24, 2005. Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, less than a week after this last exercise. Hurricane Pam was intended to be a series of exercises to develop a comprehensive emergency response plan and was only partially completed prior to Hurricane Katrina.