Emergency management – that is, emergency management as “a community, an idea” – has been hit by disaster. This present-day reality is the starting point from which emergency management must move into the future. In the short term, say the next decade, even as emergency managers attempt to “recover” from slashed budgets, personnel cuts, reduced mission-scope, and more, they will be called upon to manage disasters of even greater complexity and broader reach. That is because emergencies and disasters are on the rise, fueled by decades of population growth, especially in dangerous places and in fragile built settlements. In addition, disasters are mutating in response to unprecedented and unforeseen vulnerabilities emerging from social change and scientific and technological advance[1]. But while emergency managers are “doing their day job,” they must at the same time achieve a greater long-term goal: an actual reduction in the number, the economic and human cost, and the geographic reach of the disasters in the future’s pipeline[2]. Already, disasters are fraying the fabric of society; civilization cannot survive (let alone prosper) indefinitely in the face of the relentless growth of disasters of every stripe.
The double task – coping with the disasters of today while reducing the disaster risks of tomorrow – requires action at state and local, national, and international levels. There’s overlap, but a somewhat different emphasis is required at each scale. To illustrate:
At the state and local level. Individual disasters (most, not all – more about that later) are confined geographically. Floods, drought, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., hit hardest at local and statewide populations. In the past, these events would prompt help from a surrounding, less-impacted nation. But today those larger populations are themselves are less able and correspondingly less willing to help. Their aid rarely matches the urgent requirements of the minority trying to recover – to get their shattered lives back on track. The announced U.S. intent to eliminate FEMA is one sign of the emerging passivity in the face of need.
Here in the United States the President balances the interests and priorities of more than 300 million people living in 3000 counties. County officials and their residents care most about just one, their own, with an average population of 100,000[3]. The personal stakes are existential for residents in any immediate disaster area; attention should therefore be greatest there. Disaster reduction – avoiding settlement and commercial development in floodplains or seismic zones; establishing and enforcing robust building codes; building resilience into roadways, electrical grids, water and sewage systems, etc. – is a local matter. In this framing, it becomes a responsibility and task for the entire local (and state) community, not just the tiny subpopulation employeded by the fire department, local police, and county-level EOC’s. Emergency management is participatory; it is not a spectator sport. It is everyone’s business. The public needs to demand accountability from its political and corporate leaders; and needs to shoulder responsibility for individual and family safety. But as matters now stand, any specific public confronts this reality only episodically. Many people have little firsthand experience with hazards, and little opportunity to internalize what hazard mitigation looks like and requires in terms of daily actions and conditions on the ground.
Most of the population who will be making disaster risk and emergency management decisions in future decades are children today. Insertion of emergency management concepts and responsibilities in K-12 public education would therefore be a partial remedy. Such a curriculum emphasis would also confer several side benefits. Young people are extremely interested in natural hazards; the topic can develop interest in and passion for science and technology more broadly. And it’s not simply a portal to STEM education; it threads through civics as well and encourages critical thinking more generally. In the United States public education is under local and state control; hazard risks and emergency management issues also vary locally, so there’s a good match between in scales of the challenge and coping responsibilities and challenges.
Another need at state and local scales is the need to develop scenarios for emergencies and plans for emergency response at these scales with the local specifics in mind. This reality brings us to
The national level. Coping with disasters of today while at the same time reducing the disasters of tomorrow exposes the efforts of national leaders to wash their hands of the problem for what it is – wishful thinking. At a minimum, in the short term, the national government needs to backstop the ability of private-sector insurance and reinsurance to spread the financial risk, to provide other forms of assistance in community rebuilding and retrofitting. The importance of this should not be underestimated. Unity is what makes a nation. Nowhere is the notion of “we are all in this together” either displayed or abdicated in fuller view than in times of emergency.
Already straitened, state and local budgets are continuing to tighten even as they come up against a future of increasing disasters and emergencies. These opposing trends make innovation necessary. It will be impossible to reduce the disasters of tomorrow with the tools of yesterday. We must fight the disasters of tomorrow with tomorrow’s tools.
This need for innovation also requires national-level action. A key challenge for disaster- and emergency management lies in identifying particular risks, understanding which are the most likely, and of those which are the most consequential. This requires a predictive understanding of weather-, climate-, geological-, and even biological (think pandemic) processes. But that’s only the beginning. It extends to an understanding of how these different risks will work through the economic and social life of individual communities to disrupt their functionality and safety. Many branches of science and engineering must be brought to bear. In addition, a major priority should be the harnessing of artificial intelligence to the emergency management problem. AI holds great potential for developing the needed K-12 public educational materials, and for identifying detailed disaster scenarios tailored to the risks and capabilities of specific local communities.
Because of the enhanced effectiveness and savings that can be realized at scale, the natural science and social science databases needed for this task should be the responsibility of the federal government agencies and partners at the national level, along with the insurance and reinsurance to spread the financial portion of disaster risk. In addition, national help to localities is fundamental to building the domestic unity and trust that are the hallmark of a great nation. To do less is to risk being reduced to third-world status or splintering of the country or both. To be blunt, we were already doing this right, before we decided to cut federal budgets for NOAA, USGS, EPA, NASA, NSF, NIH, and DoE.
The international level. Keep in mind the historic truth. Recovery from natural disasters has relied almost entirely on the existence of larger, unaffected areas, and help from those areas. To some degree, nations in the past have provided help at some level to other nations recovering from natural disasters. But such relief is intermittent, patchy, limited, and undependable. U.S. efforts have been compromised by the recent elimination of USAID, as well as failure to support UN agencies such as WHO and other infrastructure for meeting such needs. Such practices need to be institutionalized, made more robust.
The risk, however, only begins there. For some disasters – climate change, or pandemics, or asteroid strike, or world war, or the insidious spread of microplastics, or a rampant spread in totalitarian governments – there are not, nor will there be, unaffected areas to draw upon. Recent experience with covid, meltdowns in the global financial sector, and the current pervasive climate of war and turmoil on every continent has demonstrated that we’re handling these global emergencies poorly, and recovering slowly, if at all. They’re intensifying. Countries need to find more means and incentives and instrumentalities to foster collaboration, build trust, and discover unity – and do so with some urgency.
The good news? We all want our lives to matter. Now’s our chance! This agenda alone (and it’s only one of dozens of global challenges) gives each of us a chance to make a difference. You may have heard it said:
The magic we want is in the work we’re avoiding.
Let’s get to it!
[1] This is argued in more detail over the history of earlier LOTRW posts – for example, here and here.
[2] Also as argued in earlier posts, and in the book Living on the Real World
[3] There’s quite a range here; Los Angeles County has a population of ten million; Loving County, TX, and Kalawao County, HI, each have populations just less than 100.
Bill:
An excellent post! A few comments.
• Disaster mitigation begins at home! You touched on this, but I think it needs to be both emphasized and amplified. I am responsible for my home and my family. I must do my part. Which begs two questions: “What do I need to do” and “what if I don’t have the discretionary resources to do what needs to be done.” The answer to the first comes out of the scenarios you rightly call for. They should inform our communities on what ought to be done to limit the negative impacts of the Wild Things – extreme events – they face.
• The answer to the second is more complicated. A part of my answer is that coming out of the scenarios should be tiers of things that can be done. No cost, low cost, and on up in cost and complexity. In Charleston, SC, the old Project Impact did this. At their annual “Hurricane University” events they would provide things we could do in this sort of tiered fashion.
• Another part of my answer is creativity in finance. At the local level, microloans, revolving loan funds, fiscal reserve funds, community development corporations and financial institutions all need to be matched to the very real needs of those who are financially disadvantaged in the context of the Wild Things their communities may face. At the state and federal level, the same holds true but in a different sense: in a time of straitened finances, how do we assist/encourage communities to do these things?
• Another part of my answer to the second question is that local governments, in particular, need to get back to basics. To me, a local government should be a steward of the public money while it does what it can to maintain the community’s quality of life. That means that you and I have to hold local leaders accountable for the decisions they make that degrade our quality of life, or that actually threaten it, or that don’t have a positive return on investment in terms of quality of life.
• As you indicate, innovation is needed, but it ought to be nurtured at the local level.
• Finally, I am far less sanguine than you about the UN and WHO playing a constructive role. Besides being avatars of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, both appear to have been compromised – UN personnel actively involved in October 7; WHO’s lack of curiosity about the origins of the recent pandemic. Involved we should stay, but we need to look to ourselves for our safety and wellbeing.