**CHAPTER 15**

**FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT**

This chapter discusses future directions in emergency management. These
can be classified as challenges and opportunities at the global,
national, and professional levels. Many of the trends identified by
Drabek (1991a) and Anderson and Mattingly (1991) continue to dominate
emergency management, including increasing exposure to environmental
hazards, increased capabilities offered by advanced emergency management
information technology, increasing recognition of the need for preimpact
action (hazard mitigation, emergency preparedness, and recovery
preparedness) in the face of inertia or outright resistance, and
increased professionalization of emergency management. Nonetheless,
there are some new issues, including the potential for changes in the
nature of environmental hazards and the increased salience of terrorism
as a threat to communities throughout the United States.

#### Introduction

There are many factors that will affect the direction of emergency
management in the coming years. These can be classified as global
challenges, global opportunities, national challenges, national
opportunities, professional challenges, and professional opportunities.

#### Global Challenges

There are many significant global challenges facing emergency managers
at the opening of the 21^st^ Century. Five of these are global climate
change, increasing population and population density, increasing
resource scarcities, rising income inequality, and increasing risk
aversion.

*Global Climate Change*

The emerging consensus among environmental scientists is that climate
change is a fact, notwithstanding uncertainties about the rate of change
and its global consequences. The 20^th^ Century saw significant
increases in global average temperature and sea level, recession in snow
cover, and changes in precipitation patterns (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, 2001). Under any reasonable set of assumptions, this
process will continue for the next 40 years and result in a global
average temperature increase of 1.4-5.8°C (2.7-10.4°F) and a sea level
rise of 0.1-0.9 meters (4-35 inches).

These changes would be challenging even if they followed a simple linear
trend. For example, small island developing states (e.g., Jamaica) and
coastal communities at all levels of economic development are
particularly vulnerable to sea level rise. However, climate change does
not appear to be linear. Instead, the rate of change seems to be
increasing. Accelerating change is a significant problem because it
steadily reduces the amount of time natural and human systems have to
adapt to new conditions.

Moreover, the effects of climate change at the local level are difficult
to predict because variation around the average conditions can be quite
large. These local variations can have unforeseen impacts on households,
businesses, and government agencies at those locations. Some of the most
important effects of climate change involve increases in the number of
extreme events---greater severity of storms and floods on the one hand
and greater severity of drought on the other hand (Mileti, 1999).
Extremes of precipitation can increase the incidence of flash floods and
riverine flooding in susceptible areas, but one of the most serious
effects of climate change could be an increase in drought conditions
across the plains of Africa, North America, and South America. Such
droughts could cause severe disruption of agriculturally based economies
in those areas. Some of the effects of climate change are already
manifesting themselves in the increase in conflicts across sub-Saharan
Africa. These conflicts are driven, in part, by competition for
increasingly scarce water resources and the shrinking availability of
arable land. Emergency managers around the world will thus be faced with
challenges due to a change in the incidence of both rapid onset (floods)
and slow onset (drought) disasters.

*Increasing Population and Population Density*

It is well understood that the world population is increasing---as much
as 50% in the next 50 years. Most of the population increase will occur
in developing countries of Asia and Africa (Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, 2003). If these countries are unable to
meet an increasing demand for food, water, and energy, they will
experience even greater political instability in the years ahead. In
particular, failed nation states that are unable to meet their
population's needs have proved to be fertile grounds for recruiting and
training terrorists---Afghanistan and Somalia being recent notable
examples.

The problem of population growth is magnified by the increasing
concentration of population in major cities and also by the increasing
scale and interconnectedness of social, economic, and political
transactions. The concentration of population creates the potential for
*catastrophes* in which densely populated areas are struck by natural
disasters or are deliberately attacked by terrorists.

The cost of a major earthquake in Tokyo could be as much as \$1-3
trillion (US), which would be 25-75% of that country's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP). In most countries, 5% is a catastrophic loss (Cherveriat,
2000). Closer to home, Hurricane Andrew could have cost \$100 billion
instead of \$20 billion if it had made landfall in downtown Miami, just
a few miles farther north. Similarly, the deaths and damage from
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans it could have been worse if the storm
had been stronger (it was only a Category 3 when it made landfall) and
struck just to the west of the city rather than to the east. Similarly,
the earthquake prone cities of the US have yet to experience "the Big
One"---a temblor approaching M8.0. Such an earthquake could be much more
costly than the 57 lives and \$25 billion lost in the Northridge
earthquake, especially if it struck in the highly vulnerable New Madrid
Seismic Zone of the Central US.

The concentration of population and wealth in major cities is being
accompanied by increasing interconnectedness among businesses. As noted
in Chapter 6, disrupted flows of information, materials, and money can
transmit the impacts of disasters throughout the economic system in ways
that are not immediately obvious from the geographical scope of impact.
Thus, the economic losses from these catastrophes will be experienced
far beyond the area of physical destruction. Nonetheless, as also noted
in Chapter 6, the immense size of the United States will limit the
geographic, social, and economic impact ratio of these disasters.

*Increasing Resource Scarcities*

Although it was noted earlier in this section that there will be
increasing variability in precipitation, resulting in decreased rainfall
in some areas and increased rainfall in other areas, there will also be
increasing shortages in water supply throughout the world because of
increasing population (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, 2003). There is over 12,500 km^3^ of fresh water available
for human use worldwide, of which half is already being used at the
present time. At the current rate of increase in consumption, the
percentage of the available fresh water being consumed will reach 90% by
2030. However, the level of availability will not be uniform across the
world and, indeed, two thirds of the world's population will experience
chronic shortages of safe drinking water by that time. Increasing
reliance on polluted water will support the propagation of infectious
diseases and cause international political instability and population
migration.

Some experts have forecast similar problems in energy and food. The
increase in energy consumption is expected to be approximately 350% in
developing countries over the next 50 years (Brown, Gardner & Halweil,
1998) and the same countries' total use of cereal grains in 2010 is
likely to increase more than 50% over the levels observed in 1990. Both
types of consumption have the potential for significant effects on local
resources (e.g., water and land), as well as regional and global
climate. Failures to meet the rising needs of developing countries'
populations has the potential to create increasing environmental
vulnerability as agriculturally unsustainable land is developed and
water resources are depleted. This could combine with social, economic,
and political instability to produce mass migrations following
disasters.

*Rising Income Inequality*

At the same time as a changing climate challenges social, economic, and
political systems throughout the world, those systems are themselves
changing in ways that increase the vulnerability of large numbers of
people. Income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the
hands of the wealthiest, a phenomenon that is increasingly apparent
between countries as well as within countries. For example, the richest
five countries in 1900 had an average GDP (in 1990 dollars) per capita
of about \$4,000 whereas the poorest five had GDPs about 1% of that
value (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2003). A
century later, however, the richest five countries had an average per
capita GDP of about \$20,000, whereas the poorest five had made little
progress. Rich countries control most of the world's economic resources
and poor countries have become increasingly burdened with levels of debt
that are impossible for them to repay. Such conditions increase the
potential for social instability, civil unrest, and violent political
action.

*Increasing Risk Aversion*

Some evidence from research on risk perception and communication
suggests the residents of developed countries are demanding steady
decreases in the risks associated with many technologies (Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2003). Moreover, disaster
victims are substantially less willing to patiently await the
restoration of normal community life. People angrily demand to have
power restored in hours even though they might have waited silently for
weeks in the past. Unfortunately, this is rarely accompanied by
citizens' increased willingness to pay higher taxes to support an
enhanced emergency management capability or, in the case of electric
power, increased rates to have power lines placed underground where they
are safe from wind damage. Thus, emergency managers must be prepared to
"make do" with current levels of resources, respond effectively and
efficiently during and after disasters, and plan how to respond
patiently to the unrealistic expectations of some community members.

# Global Opportunities

Emergency managers are also faced with exciting opportunities as the
21^st^ Century begins. These include increased scientific understanding
of the hazards and societal responses, as well as revolutionary
technologies.

## *Increased Scientific Understanding of Hazards and Societal Responses*

In order to manage hazards effectively, policymakers need to know what
is actually causing the problems facing them. There is an increasing
awareness at all levels of society of the connection between the
ecological health of systems and the occurrence of disasters, both
natural and technological. The human dimension is no longer an
afterthought. Indeed, there is increasing recognition that the economy
is part of the ecology, not vice versa (Davidson, 2001). All economic
benefits are based on the ability of the soil, air, and water to perform
their life sustaining functions. At present, this ability is unevenly
distributed around the world and is deteriorating in most places. It is
very expensive to recover the life sustaining functions of the
environment once it has been lost and, in some places, might even be
impossible with current technologies. This is a major global problem
because deterioration in a nation's ability to feed its population
increases its vulnerability to disasters at the same time as funding is
less available for disaster assistance. The increased scientific
understanding of these principles has created conflict between those who
want to use them as a guide for smart growth and those who wish to
pursue economic growth at any cost (preferably where the cost is borne
by the taxpayers in general or by future generations).

Increasing numbers of individuals and governments are becoming aware
that natural disturbances are not necessarily disasters, but can be
healthy events that promote wise occupation and use of lands
(Abramowitz, 2001b). For example, seasonal flooding improves the health
of rivers and maintains delta lands that are highly fertile habitat for
protein rich stocks of marine life. Naturally occurring wildfires
maintain the health of prairie land and some forest habitats by
eliminating old diseased trees and limiting the amount of fuel (trees,
brush, leaves, and grass) available for burning. Scientists have also
found that excessive flood control measures are producing a steady loss
of coastal land in Louisiana by confining the Mississippi River,
speeding the stream flow, and causing silt to be transported out into
the Gulf of Mexico. They also understand now that overenthusiastic
suppression of small and medium sized wildfires has dramatically
increased the amount of fuel and, thus, the potential for catastrophic
fires. An increased understanding of, and accommodation to, the natural
systems we ultimately depend on can improve our patterns of settlement
over the long term. Such understanding can also promote changes in the
patterns of resource use. Many resources have been exploited for short
term economic purposes with little regard to the long term effects on
critical ecological systems. There are encouraging signs that businesses
around the world are beginning to understand their impacts on the
environment and are adjusting their product lines and distribution
systems to reflect a more responsible economic ethic.

# *Revolutionary Technologies*

The "intelligent city of the 21^st^ Century" has the promise of seamless
wireless linkages among its households, businesses, and government
agencies (Ellis & Waugh, 2001). Already, people have increasing
opportunities to perform such diverse transactions as purchasing goods
and services and participating in civic governance electronically rather
than face-to-face or by letters (Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, 2003). Information is increasingly stored in databases
that can be interconnected. Indeed, communities are adopting enterprise
software systems in which all the data a jurisdiction collectes is
electronically stored, manipulated, and retrieved within a single
software system. Such seamless integration promises increased
effectiveness and efficiency throughout all aspects of society and, in
particular, has the potential to significantly alter the operation of
emergency management. However, electronic technologies also are
vulnerable to cyberterrorism.

Much of the early emphasis on the use of *emergency management
information technology* was on developing decision support systems for
the response phase of disasters (Marston, 1986). An application that has
received increasing attention is the use of computers for conducting
hazard/vulnerability analyses. Researchers have described how computers
can be used to identify areas at risk (Berke, et al., 1984; Dash, 1997;
Griffith, 1986) and project the damages resulting from a major incident
(French, 1986; Haney, 1986; Scawthorne, 1986). In addition, there are
many rapidly developing information technologies with the potential for
positive effects on emergency management. These other forms of emergency
management information technology include remote sensing, global
positioning, cellular communication, and increasingly powerful computing
hardware and software. Some of these technologies affect all phases of
emergency management, whereas others affect only specific phases.

*Hazard/vulnerability analysis.* The need for systematic data on
disaster losses has been recognized for over 20 years (Drabek, 1991a)
and has recently received attention again (Mileti, 1999). There are
limited data on the frequency with which different types of disasters
occur, the cost of those disasters, and the cost effectiveness of
emergency management activities in reducing disaster losses. Such data
are vitally important in an era of increasingly tight budgets when all
departments of government are called upon to demonstrate their cost
effectiveness. Major disasters are unlikely to occur during a senior
administrator's or elected official's term of office. Consequently,
emergency management has a difficult time competing for attention with
less dramatic, but more certain, demands such as subdivision controls,
jail expansions, and street repairs. Emergency managers can become more
effective in demonstrating the effectiveness of their programs if they
can use the available data, together with computer programs such as
HAZUS, to estimate long term losses from maximum credible disasters in
their communities. By comparing these losses to the costs of emergency
management actions such as hazard mitigation and emergency preparedness,
emergency managers can demonstrate the advantages of preimpact action.

Fischer (1998) and Mileti (1999) have noted that increasing amounts of
data are accessible through the Internet at the Web sites of federal
agencies such as FEMA, NOAA, and USGS. Hwang, et al. (2001) recently
found that state emergency management agencies also are making hazard
analysis information available on their Web sites. However, Lindell, et
al. (2002) reported that over one third of the responding local
government agencies use only a few sources of hazard analysis
information and nearly one third use no hazard analysis information at
all. For those local government agencies that do access hazard analysis
information routinely, internet sites account for a significant portion
of the information sources they have about hazards in their community.

There is an increasing amount of data available for assessing community
hazard and vulnerability, but limits continue. Flood Insurance Rate Maps
(FIRMs) are widely available in hardcopy and also on the Internet, so it
is much easier for emergency managers to identify areas in the 100 year
and 500 year floodplains. One continuing problem is that floodplain
boundaries often change as upstream areas are developed, so FIRMs need
to be updated. However, the high cost of conducting the necessary
hydrological studies slows the process. As noted in Chapter 6, the long
time availability of the SLOSH computer model has made it possible to
identify coastal areas that are exposed to storm surge. Similarly, HAZUS
has been available for nearly a decade and has been upgraded recently to
address wind and flood in addition to its original earthquake component.
These data supplement the large scale maps provided on agency Web sites
such as those noted in Chapter 6. Hazard analysis data for some toxic
chemicals became more widely available in the late 1980s as a result of
the reporting requirements of SARA Title III and off site consequence
analyses were required in the mid-1990s under Section 112(r) of the
Clean Air Act Amendments. These led to the development of ALOHA (Federal
Emergency Management Agency, no date, a) and *Technical Guidance for
Hazards Analysis* (US Environmental Protection Agency, 1987). However,
the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has led to the restriction
of such information because of concerns that it could allow terrorists
to identify high value targets. Thus, this information has been
increasingly limited to the staff of chemical facilities, LEPCs, SERCs,
and LEMAs.

Unquestionably the greatest advances in this area have been associated
with the increased availability of GISs for database management,
mapping, and spatial analysis. This technology has many important
applications in emergency management, but there are virtually no data on
the extent to which GIS is being used by local emergency managers.
Emergency management programs in some universities strongly encourage
their students to take GIS courses, but even those emergency managers
who have not acquired GIS skills can work with land use planners in
their jurisdictions who do have those skills (Lindell, et al., 2002).

*Hazard mitigation.* The widespread dissemination of GIS capabilities is
also one of the most important technological advances in hazard
mitigation. GIS technology supports hazard mitigation by providing a
more effective method of storing and retrieving data about property
parcels and infrastructure within each jurisdiction. GIS makes it
possible to compare alternative versions of land use plans to determine
which of them best satisfies a community's goals for economic
development, social justice, and environmental sustainability. In
addition, storage of information about flood plains, seismic faults, and
vulnerable zones for hazmat facilities and hazmat transportation routes
allows emergency managers to work with land use planners to identify the
appropriate use for each land parcel (Lindell, 2006). Flexible access to
many data layers makes it possible to vary the information displayed at
different points in public presentations. This avoids inundating
audiences with overwhelming detail in the initial stages of community
meetings. Finally, the ability to make maps available on a
jurisdiction's web site provides greater information access for
citizens.

Assessment of structural resistance to hazard impacts remains a problem
because such assessments are most easily and accurately conducted during
construction by trained building inspectors. Postconstruction
assessments of wind and seismic resistance are difficult because
connections among structural elements are covered by exterior cladding
such as plywood panels and brick veneer. Resistance to air infiltration
can be assessed accurately, but the process is time consuming and
expensive. Consequently, emergency managers must continue to rely on the
age of a neighborhood's structures (and, thus, the version of the
building code under which they were built) in making judgments about
hazard resistance.

*Emergency preparedness.* The primary technological advances in this
area are related to computing and the Internet. Plans and procedures
have long been stored and updated on computers, but recent years have
seen an increased ability for preparing presentation graphics such as
PowerPoint to facilitate training. Similarly, expanding technology in
digital photography and digital video, when combined with storage in CD
and DVD formats, facilitates the rapid dissemination of training
materials at a very modest cost.

Some software applications such as GIS and CAMEO/ALOHA contribute to
emergency preparedness (and emergency response) as well as to
hazard/vulnerability analysis because they provide databases that can be
used to store information other than vulnerable zones (which is the
hazard/vulnerability analysis application). For example, these databases
can be used during training, drills, and exercises to retrieve data
about the locations of specific emergency response resources.

There have been numerous developments in evacuation modeling such as
CLEAR (Moeller, Urbanik & Desrosiers, 1981), NETVAC1 (Sheffi, Mahmassani
& Powell, 1980), and MASSVAC (Hobeika & Jamei, 1985), but they are very
difficult to use by anyone other than their developers and specially
trained analysts. Typically, evacuation modeling programs have been run
using predetermined scenarios to calculate the evacuation time estimates
(ETEs) for specific jurisdictions (Lindell, et al., 2002). The obvious
limitation of this procedure is that the ETEs are of questionable
accuracy if the conditions in an actual incident differ from those
analyzed beforehand. In many cases, emergency managers have not been
informed about the model's assumptions, so they cannot make the
appropriate adjustments when the need arises (Lindell & Prater, 2005).
OREMS (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2003), an evacuation model
developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is currently being
revised to provide a graphical user interface that will make it easier
for local emergency managers to use.

*Emergency response.* There have been major advances in integrated
detection, forecast, and warning systems, and the future seems bright
for continued advances in this area. Anderson and Mattingly (1991) noted
improved prediction technology for meteorological (hurricanes and
tornadoes) and hydrological (floods and tsunamis) hazards. This trend
has continued and has been accompanied by improvements in the prediction
of volcanic eruptions but not earthquakes (Sorensen, 2000).

Sensing and recording devices include detection systems for hurricanes,
flash floods, tsunamis (the current system for the Pacific Ocean will be
extended to the Indian Ocean), volcanic eruptions, and hazmat
(especially the release of toxic chemical, biological, or radiological
agents). Other devices include satellite and aerial remote sensing,
geographical positioning (GPS) systems, portable weather stations,
scanners, and digital cameras. Communications devices include cellular
and satellite telephones, pagers, fax machines, and personal computers
that are connected through systems such as satellite dishes and local
and wide area network connections (Tierney, 1995). Radio continues to be
a mainstay of emergency communications, but there is increasing
attention to problems of interoperability (US Department of Homeland
Security, 2004a). Emergency managers also are using specific software
for hazard analysis such as GIS (Environmental Systems Research
Institute, 2000), CAMEO (National Safety Council, 1995), ALOHA (FEMA, no
date, a), and HAZUS (National Institute for Building Sciences, 1998).
Although it is clear that these technologies will receive increasing
utilization, research will be needed to examine the rate at which these
other technologies are being adopted and the factors affecting their
adoption.

At the time of Drabek's (1991d) evaluation, only sirens could provide
immediate warnings for large areas. Since then, telephone based
community alerting systems have become increasingly prominent. The NOAA
*Weather Radio* system has long provided tone activated notification of
emergencies over most of the populated area of the United States (Travis
& Riebsame, 1979) and its coverage has been extended over the years. In
addition, the old *Emergency Broadcast System* has been replaced by the
new *Emergency Alert System* to provide a greater range of capabilities
in the digital age. The *Partnership for Public Warning* has served as a
central focus for promoting advanced use of cellular telephones and
other digital technologies for notifying emergency managers and
responders, as well as warning risk area residents.

*Disaster recovery.* Many of the technologies that support emergency
response also support disaster recovery, especially in the short term
recovery phase. The increasing availability of cellular telephones, GPS
devices, and powerful computers (both notebook and pocket sized)
facilitates rapid and definitive disaster assessment. This is especially
advantageous in retrieving the locations of critical facilities
(schools, hospitals, nursing homes), hazardous facilities,
infrastructure (bridges and viaducts), and historic buildings from
databases. In addition, damage assessors can enter their findings
directly into those databases (bypassing paper forms) and use wireless
capabilities to transmit each day's disaster assessments back to the
EOC.

*Summary of technological advances*. The most directly relevant
assessment of EMIT adoption was conducted by Drabek (1991d), who
interviewed personnel in the state emergency management agencies in
three states, and also in twelve local emergency management agencies
within those states. His study dealt with four major topics:

-   Factors affecting the adoption and implementation of personal
    computers,

-   Actual use of personal computers in emergency response,

-   Computer impacts on the emergency management agencies, and

-   Policy issues regarding computer usage.

In addressing the first topic, Drabek found the chief incentives for
implementing computers were "increased office efficiency (e.g., word
processing capability); networking potential; budget management;
resource management; public warning/evacuation applications (e.g., flash
flood warnings); automated emergency notification for staff; and
decision support systems such as hurricane tracking" (1991d, p. 58). He
also discovered several barriers slowing the process of installing
computers in these agencies---insufficient numbers of trained staff,
machine incompatibility, and inadequate availability of information
about EMIT.

Regarding actual computer use in emergency response and disaster
recovery (e.g., warning, evacuation, situation reports, communication
and damage assessment), Drabek (1991d) found that some emergency
managers were using computers for each of these tasks. However, they
also faced three major difficulties in this area as well: software
inadequacies, staff shortages, and database related problems.

In connection with computer impacts on emergency management agencies,
Drabek also noted emergency managers were required to create new
positions and new policies, redefine staff member responsibilities, and
consider budget stability. He added that the implementation of computers
helped strengthen the image of their agencies because of new
capabilities such as the refined appearance of documents and "reinforced
centrality of emergency management agencies within the response network"
(1991d, p. 115). Finally, Drabek (1991d) reported all survey respondents
agreed with three policy proposals. These included creating a national
information clearinghouse, publishing a newsletter on the use of
personal computers in emergency management, and augmenting federal
funding for the implementation of computers in emergency management.

In summary, previous research shows that many information technologies
are being employed in emergency management, but there is evidence of
implementation barriers that have impeded widespread use. A major
problem is not the limitations of the best available technology but the
limited access many jurisdictions have to such technology because of its
expense in terms of hardware and software acquisition, as well as
training LEMA personnel to operate it.

**National Challenges**

There are many challenges that US emergency managers will have to face
directly in the coming years. These include increasing urbanization and
hazard exposure, interdependencies in infrastructure, continued emphasis
on growth, rising costs of disaster recovery, increasing population
diversity, terrorist threats, low priority of emergency management,
legal liability, and intergovernmental tensions.

*Increasing Urbanization and Hazard Exposure*

As is the case for the world as a whole, the US population is projected
to increase over the next 50 years. However, the United States will
experience a disproportionate share of the increased population growth
and property development in hazard prone areas (Federal Emergency
Management Agency, 1997a; Mileti, 1998; Schwab, et al., 1998). Despite
this increasing rate of exposure to environmental hazards, the United
States has seen no significant increase in the annual loss of life to
these events. Indeed, casualties have declined for many hazards because
of improved detection, forecast, and warning systems (Sorensen, 2000).
What has increased---and is increasing exponentially---is property loss
(Mileti, 1999). The continuing rise in risk area population suggests the
recent trend of disaster losses will continue for the foreseeable
future; casualties will continue to decline because of improved
emergency preparedness and response, but property losses will continue
to increase. The possible exception to these trends might be a decrease
in the downward trend for disaster casualties if increased hurricane
forecast accuracy is not accompanied by corresponding increases in
evacuation network capacity. In this case, the average annual death toll
could reach a stable minimum level with an occasional large number of
casualties during a Category 4 or 5 hurricane---as evidenced by
Hurricane Katrina. Similar spikes in casualties could result from an
urban earthquake near M8.0 in a Western state (where building codes have
stricter seismic provisions) or one of lesser magnitude in a Central or
Eastern state (where there are many buildings made of unreinforced
masonry or other seismically vulnerable designs and materials).

## *Interdependencies in Infrastructure*

Recent years have seen increasing efficiency throughout the national
economy. "Just in time" manufacturing has reduced inventories, thereby
increasing profits for investors and lower prices for consumers. In some
cases, this increased efficiency has even reduced industrial
vulnerability to hazards because reduced inventories mean reduced losses
when a disaster does strike. In other cases, however, undamaged
companies have become more vulnerable to disasters because of the
disruption to their supply chains. The reduction of raw material
inventories means companies must shut down their operations if their
suppliers are damaged. The effect of natural disasters and accidental
technological disasters is likely to be relatively small, but deliberate
attacks on electronic government, commerce (especially banking), could
be much more damaging.

Increasing economic concentration in products (e.g., airplane size),
organizations (i.e., corporation size), and geographic location (i.e.,
industrial clustering) all increase short term efficiency by reducing
the amount of resources needed to produce each additional unit of goods
and services. In many cases, this economic concentration is stimulated
by competition that benefits consumers when reduced costs are passed on
to them in the form of reduced prices. However, short term efficiency
necessarily eliminates the reserve resources that are often needed to
cope with disruptions. This prevents customers from obtaining the
products and services they need, even if they are willing to pay higher
prices. Thus, increased diversity and redundancy need to be built into
sociotechnical systems to assure they can reliably meet their customers'
needs.

*Continued Emphasis on Growth*

Public policy in most communities is significantly affected by "growth
coalitions" comprising real estate, construction, and other commercial
interest groups that are "focused on the expectation that each will
directly or indirectly benefit from growth in public subsidies to and
private investments in infrastructure, civic capital, construction, and
related activities that help to attract people, employers and jobs to a
local area" (Buttel, 1997, p. 47). Such interests have often developed
hazard prone land and promptly sold it to others, allowing them to avoid
the long term consequences of their development decisions. Attempts to
defeat the development of hazard prone areas by opposing all growth are
generally not feasible. Fortunately, they are not necessary either. What
is needed is *smart growth* directed to less exposed locations or, if
that is not possible (e.g., in the case of tornadoes where there is no
local variation in hazard exposure), by implementation of hazard
resistant building practices. If emergency managers form coalitions with
other local government agencies (e.g. land use planning and community
development), businesses (especially banks and insurers whose financial
viability is threatened by disaster losses), and community groups, they
can reduce disaster losses in their communities.

*Rising Costs of Disaster Recovery*

As noted in the previous section, property losses from environmental
hazards are increasing exponentially and a significant portion of those
losses are paid by federal disaster relief programs. The problem with
this approach is that those with property in the most disaster prone
areas receive the most disaster relief, but the cost of this program is
distributed over all taxpayers in proportion to the taxes they pay. This
would be a fair system if those who received the most disaster relief
also paid the highest taxes, but there is no evidence this is the case.
Thus, property owners in disaster prone areas are being subsidized by
the rest of the taxpayers. A politically fairer and economically more
efficient system would be to expand the present system of flood
insurance to cover all hazards and to charge premiums in proportion to
policyholders' loss potential (Kunreuther & Roth, 1998). This solution
was recognized over 30 years ago (White & Haas, 1975) and was noted
again 15 years ago (Drabek, 1991a), but has made limited progress.
During the 1990s, FEMA was able to improve federal flood insurance by
promoting the Community Rating System and reducing repetitive losses
(purchasing and demolishing houses that were flooded and repaired
numerous times). Nonetheless, further progress in flood insurance has
been limited. Moreover, insurance for earthquakes and hurricanes has
become increasingly problematic, so the cost of disaster recovery seems
likely to continue to be borne by an increasingly politicized process of
presidential disaster declarations.

### Increasing Population Diversity 

Recent years have seen an increase in the cultural and language
diversity of the US population. The number of Hispanic immigrants to
southern tier states such as Florida, Texas, and California is well
known, but there are increasing numbers of Hispanics in northern states
as well. In addition, there are many other cultural and linguistic
groups that have also immigrated to this country. In some jurisdictions
such as Los Angeles County, there are more than 100 major languages or
dialects into which emergency management information needs to be
translated. In addition, the average age of the US population has been
increasing steadily and the percentage of the population greater than 65
years of age is increasing rapidly. Thus, emergency managers should
expect many more risk area residents to have physical or mental
limitations. Some of these will be in nursing homes where they can be
readily warned and evacuated in emergencies, but others who live
independently require additional assistance when disasters strike
(Tierney, et al., 2001).

There also is increasing inequality in household incomes throughout the
US, just as there is throughout the world. Over the past decade, the
incomes of the top 20% of households have increased, whereas those of
the bottom 20% of households have decreased. Further, the median income
varies across jurisdictions, with some rural counties having income
levels substantially below their urban and suburban counterparts. This
has negative implications for jurisdictions whose households have
incomes below the national average because it implies a continually
eroding tax base. In turn, this will lead to dwindling budget
allocations for LEMAs and the other public safety departments with which
they work. This disparity between the richest and poorest jurisdictions
will continue to fuel the "digital divide" between those who do and
those who do not have enough money and training to adopt emerging
electronic technologies. At the household level, income inequality is an
important component of social vulnerability that reduces households'
ability to respond adequately to disasters, let alone undertake hazard
mitigation programs.

*Terrorist Threats*

Most terrorist threats involve familiar hazard agents such as explosive
and flammable materials; toxic chemicals have been used much less
frequently and radiological and biological agents have so far remained a
potential threat. Regardless of the specific hazard agent used,
terrorist attacks will initiate the familiar agent generated demands for
emergency assessment, hazard operations, and population protection. The
methods of emergency assessment will differ from those involved in
natural hazards because threat detection and emergency classification,
hazard and environmental monitoring, population monitoring and
assessment, and damage assessment differ by hazard agent. However, the
types of hazard agents used by terrorists might not differ from those
that can be released accidentally from fixed site facilities and
transportation of hazardous materials. In fact, the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon (not to mention the attack on Oklahoma
City's Murrah Federal Building) should signal a high likelihood that
terrorists will repeat the use of indigenous materials---those already
available in the US. That is, future attacks might involve hazardous
materials facilities (e.g., chemical or nuclear plants) or
transportation routes (e.g., trucks or railcars carrying hazardous
materials through densely populated areas).

Similarly, methods of hazard operations, such as hazard source control
and impact mitigation, are likely to be the same as for existing
technological hazards. Methods of population protection will also
continue to involve protective action selection and population warning,
protective action implementation, impact zone access control and
security, reception and care of victims, search and rescue, emergency
medical care and morgues, and hazard exposure control.

However, terrorist threats could pose some significant new challenges.
Exotic chemicals such as sarin gas, "dirty bombs" (explosive devices
designed to disperse radioactive materials that contaminate victims),
and biohazards (e.g., exotic diseases such as Ebola virus) exhibit some
behaviors that are unfamiliar to local emergency responders (e.g.,
contagion rather than contamination).These will require new
biohazard-specific emergency response procedures, even though the
general processes of emergency assessment, hazard operations, and
population protection defined in local EOPs will remain the same.
Similarly, all terrorist threats initiate response generated demands
that are the same as for more familiar natural and technological
hazards. These include agency notification and mobilization, internal
direction and control, external coordination, public information,
administrative and logistic support, and documentation.

Consequently, community preparedness for terrorist threats will continue
to have the same objectives as other preparedness for hazards. That is,
emergency managers must link preparedness for each hazard agent into
existing emergency management networks. In addition, they must
anticipate potential hazard impacts on risk area population segments and
assess their capabilities for self protection. They also must develop
clear lines of authority and mechanisms for interorganizational
coordination. Further, emergency managers must allocate response
functions according to agency competence and resources, identify
potential sources of extracommunity assistance, and establish horizontal
and vertical mechanisms to coordinate with them. Finally, they must
promote emergency resource acquisition at household, organization,
community, and supracommunity levels.

As is the case for other hazards, household emergency preparedness for
terrorist threats will depend upon the same processes that were involved
for the other hazards addressed in Chapter 4. These are basic awareness
of hazard agents and feasible protective actions, hazard intrusiveness
(frequency of thought, discussion, and information receipt), beliefs
about hazards (severity, duration, certainty, immediacy), and beliefs
about hazard adjustments (efficacy in protecting persons and property,
utility for other purposes, cost, safety, time and effort, equipment and
skill, and cooperation from others). Moreover, organizational and
community emergency preparedness for terrorist threats is likely to
continue to have a low priority, especially in small private sector
organizations without prior disaster experience. Preparedness for
terrorist threats is also likely to show substantial variation in the
quality of local preparedness networks. Unfortunately, preparedness for
terrorist threats is also likely to rely as much on improvisation as on
planning to resolve questions of authority and interorganizational
coordination. Finally, it is likely to repeat mistakes identified by
disaster researchers and experienced emergency managers unless the
lessons learned from past experience are integrated into plans,
procedures, and training for homeland security.

Emergency preparedness for terrorist threats raises some important new
issues. The presence of an intelligent adversary escalates information
security problems that have emerged during response to industrial
accidents and environmental extremes. An intelligent adversary could
take advantage of predictable population protective responses to inflict
even greater casualties in secondary attacks during mass evacuations.
Emergency managers must work with public health agencies---unfamiliar
partners in most jurisdictions---to establish methods of emergency
response coordination. Local emergency response organizations need to be
trained and equipped for biohazard-specific methods of emergency
assessment, hazard operations, and population protection. Extensive
drills and exercises are needed to determine if biohazard contagion
could create emergency response challenges even more complex than those
of hazardous materials contamination.

*Low Priority of Emergency Management*

For many years, emergency management has had a low priority on the
government agenda, but this changed dramatically in the aftermath of the
9/11 terrorist attacks. The history of previous events suggests interest
in any hazard agent is highest when it conveys what Slovic (1987) calls
*signal value*---an indication that a previously unnoticed threat
warrants attention. Despite the recent attention to terrorism, it is
certainly not a new phenomenon. In fact, terrorism was the proximate
cause of World War I; the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand
and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914 initiated a succession of military
mobilizations and declarations of war all over Europe. Moreover,
terrorism has been used for decades in Ireland and Great Britain and has
been institutionalized in the relationship between the Israeli state and
the Palestinians.

Indeed, terrorism was not even new in the United States. Only six years
before the 9/11 attacks, the Murrah Federal Building was destroyed and
168 people killed in Oklahoma City. What was new about 9/11 was the
major strike by foreign nationals on US soil, coupled with the fact that
the attack was very dramatic and telegenic, as well as very deadly. The
political implications of the attack and its aftermath are vast and will
not be fully understood for generations. The challenge to emergency
management professionals is to hold onto and apply what they already
know while adapting as necessary to any changes that are truly required.
An additional challenge will be to cope with the restrictions on
mobility and access to information that have been implemented in the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

If the past is any guide to the future, it is likely that recent
attention to the threat of terrorist attack will wane in coming years.
The 1979 nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, the 1985
chemical release in Bhopal India, and other events have attracted media
attention and government action in their immediate aftermath. In the
long run, however, the media, the public, and government have reverted
to an indifferent attitude toward these hazards. Thus, a major question
concerns the length of time terrorism will dominate the news and the
spending priorities of government. The generally low priority of
emergency management could drop even lower in the coming years because
of the substantial increase in the national debt and budget restrictions
at state and local levels.

*Legal Liability*

Drabek (1991a) noted senior policymakers considered legal liability to
be a major policy issue because of the variation from state to state
and, in some cases, the ambiguity within a state regarding emergency
managers', emergency responders', and volunteers' liability in an
emergency response (see also Pine, 1991). Anderson and Mattingly (1991)
advised emergency managers to be aware of the areas in which their
actions (especially those intended to protect public safety) might
conflict with individuals' rights (especially property rights). They
noted advice from a jurisdiction's legal counsel is always appropriate,
but the potential for infringement on individual rights can be reduced
by transparency and reasonableness in the decisionmaking process and
fair implementation and enforcement of any actions resulting from those
decisions. Thus, emergency managers should have reasonable grounds for
taking an action (i.e., a threat to public safety), notify those who
will be affected (and, for good measure, those who are likely to *think*
they will be affected) by the action, provide affected parties an
opportunity to be heard, and take only those actions that have a
rational nexus with the problem (i.e., have a reasonable probability of
reducing the threat to public safety). Recent legal decisions such as
*Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council* (112 S.Ct., at 2886, 1992) and
*Dolan v. City of Tigard, Oregon* (114 S.Ct., at 2309, 1994) have
clarified the need to avoid actions that constitute public "taking" of
all or a substantial portion of the economic value of private property
(Platt, 1998). The balance between public safety and private property
rights has been a contentious issue for many years; split votes by the
US Supreme Court indicate the conflict is unlikely to abate and the
direction of future change will be difficult to predict. In addition to
maintaining an awareness of current case law on this topic, emergency
managers must also be vigilant to changes in state law because many
states have passed legislation regarding these issues.

*Intergovernmental Tensions*

One area that exemplified the tensions among federal, state, and local
governments during the late 1980s was preparedness for nuclear attack
(Anderson & Mattingly, 1991; Drabek, 1991a), but that issue disappeared
with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the fact that
intergovernmental tensions have continued is testimony to their
structural nature. That is, there are fundamental conflicts among levels
of government that are inherent in the powers each level possesses
within a federal system of government. Further, there are significant
differences in technical expertise (usually greater at higher levels of
government), site specific data (usually greater at lower levels of
government), financial resources (usually greater at higher levels of
government), and direct accountability to those at risk (usually greater
at lower levels of government).

*Conflicting Values*

May and Deyle (1998) have pointed to a conflict between the goals of
economic development and private property rights, on the one hand, and
public safety and welfare, on the other hand. The balance between these
two sets of goals is managed by a system of case law (decided by the
courts), legislation, and executive orders and regulations. Each of
these three branches of government exists at three different levels
(federal, state, and local), so it is no wonder that this system of
government has produced a "patchwork" of requirements. Indeed, flood
hazards are managed by 12 federal agencies, all 50 states, 3,000
conservation districts, and 20,000 local governments in flood prone
areas (Federal Interagency Floodplain Management Task Force, 1992). The
federal government alone has more than 50 hazard management laws and
executive orders, enacted at different times, that have confusing and
conflicting requirements.

As May and Deyle (1998) observe, there is very limited control over land
use at the federal level and, indeed, at the state or county levels in
some states. Moreover, the federal land use provisions that do exist are
weakly enforced and, worse yet, federal programs indirectly encourage
development of hazardous areas by providing funding for infrastructure
(e.g., roads and sewers) development in hazardous areas. Federal
programs also provide subsidized flood insurance; as well as grants,
subsidized loans, and tax writeoffs to disaster victims. The inevitable
consequence of this development is an increased number of people and
property at risk and an increase in the number of major emergencies and
disasters confronting emergency managers. In the absence of mutually
agreed restrictions, individual communities often find themselves
competing with each other to attract economic development. They do this
by offering more favorable terms to developers who are, understandably,
seeking the most profitable financial outcomes for themselves. Thus,
there is a clear need for regional solutions in which jurisdictions
commit themselves to a common set of development regulations, especially
when these can be supported by financial and technical assistance from
higher levels of government or by regional organizations that have the
technical capacities none of the local jurisdictions could afford to
acquire for themselves. Such approaches can avoid minimal compliance
with standardized "cookie cutter" programs.

**National Opportunities**

There was a shift in the federal emphasis within emergency management
from response and recovery to preimpact action during the decade of the
1990s. Project Impact, in particular, played a major role in fostering
public private partnerships to identify hazard prone areas and promote
mitigation actions by government, businesses, and households.
Unfortunately, federal funding for this initiative has been eliminated.
Nonetheless, many of the local programs continue to exist and some are
funded at the local level (Prater, 2001). Chapter 3 outlined a way for
local emergency managers to expand their missions by engaging in hazard
mitigation (Burby, 1998) and disaster recovery (Schwab, et al., 1998)
activities.

**Professional Challenges**

There are two important professional challenges confronting emergency
managers in the coming years. These are linkage of emergency management
with new professions and linkage of emergency management practitioners
with academic disciplines.

*Linkage of Emergency Management with New Professions*

For years, emergency managers have worked with the fire service, law
enforcement, and emergency medical services. Even though unanimity is
rarely achieved among these groups, frequent contact among them has
often promoted effective interagency performance in emergency
preparedness and response. In many communities, Project Impact's
emphasis on hazard mitigation stimulated increased involvement of
emergency managers with departments of land use planning and community
development. Similarly, increased concern about biological threats such
as an influenza pandemic has increased the interaction of emergency
managers with public health departments. Nonetheless, the contacts with
these new agencies appear to have remained limited and could revert to
their previous low levels in the aftermath of the termination of Project
Impact (in the case of departments of land use planning and community
development) and if years pass with no biological attacks with public
health departments.

*Linkage of Emergency Management Practitioners and Academic Disciplines*

The linkage between emergency management practitioners and
hazard/disaster researchers is a topic that has been addressed
repeatedly at the annual workshop of the Natural Hazards Research and
Applications Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The
recurrent complaint from each group is that the other fails to meets its
needs and does not understand its constraints. This gap between
academics and practitioners is not unique to emergency management; it is
a complaint voiced in connection with every other professional
department in academe. This complaint arises in the professions of
architecture, business, construction, engineering, public
administration, public health, and urban and regional planning. There is
no easy solution to the gap between academics and practitioners because
emergency management professors and practicing emergency managers are
employed by institutions with very different cultures and face different
situational constraints in their daily work. Emergency managers want
solutions that address conditions as they currently exist in their
local, state, and federal agencies. This often means they face problems
that change from one day to the next and want a solution immediately (if
not yesterday). By contrast, professors have many duties in addition to
the service activities they perform for emergency management agencies.
They have courses to teach on a relatively rigid academic schedule that
limits their flexibility in meeting emergency management agencies needs.
Professors in teaching institutions have a large number of courses and
must respond to the needs of a large number of undergraduate students.
Professors in research institutions have a smaller number of courses,
but are expected to supervise graduate students (who require much more
time than the same number of undergraduates) and conduct research that
is reviewed by editors who are often more interested in contributions to
disciplinary theory than to the solution of practical problems.

The most positive aspect of this situation is that it seems to be
changing for the better. Professors in emergency management and related
fields (e.g., geography, planning, political science, psychology, public
administration, sociology) seem to have greater contact with emergency
managers than was the case in the past. There is an increasing number of
research projects designed to solve practical problems rather than
address purely theoretical issues (although the best research makes both
theoretical and practical contributions) and an increasing number of
reports written for practitioners rather than for other academics. The
increasing number of emergency management programs seems likely to
enhance this trend by producing even more professors who want to
establish productive relationships with emergency managers at all levels
of government.

**Professional Opportunities**

There are two important professional challenges confronting emergency
managers in the coming years. These are the professionalization of
emergency management, involvement in hazard mitigation, involvement in
preimpact disaster recovery planning, expansion of the professional
domain, and regional collaboration.

*Increased Professionalization of Emergency Management*

For many years, the ranks of emergency managers have been staffed by
public safety officers from police and fire departments or by retired
military personnel. If they had a postsecondary degree, it was rarely
related to emergency management. However, recent years have seen an
increased availability of graduates holding postsecondary degrees in
emergency management, which has been a significant improvement over the
conditions acknowledged by Drabek (1991a). Blanchard (2004) reported
that, as late as 1995, there were only three academic institutions
offering emergency management majors (University of North Texas, Thomas
Edison University, and Rochester Institute of Technology) and only two
that were offering emergency management certificate programs (University
of Wisconsin and UCLA). By June of 2004, there were 115 programs listed
with the FEMA Higher Education Program. Nineteen of these were Associate
degrees and eleven were Bachelor degrees requiring as many as ten
courses. Another 50 were certificate programs or minors that generally
require half as many courses. In addition, there were 35 graduate (28
Master and seven Ph.D.) programs. These programs are currently found in
39 states, with an additional eight states having programs proposed for
initiation in the near future. The obvious advantage of hiring someone
with a degree in emergency management is that the person begins with a
base of knowledge that can be enriched by on the job training rather
than relying solely on it.

Although information is readily available about the number of programs,
there is much less information available about other aspects of the
emergency management staffing process. According to specialists (e.g.,
Cascio, 1998), the human resource management process for a given job
comprises the labor market, applicant pool, selection process, job
demands, job context, education and training, performance evaluation,
tangible compensation, intangible rewards, job tenure, and turnover.
Unfortunately, there appears to be little or no information available
about these aspects of the emergency management staffing process
(Lindell, 2003). Specifically, little is known about the sources of
recruitment for new emergency managers; who chooses the successful
candidates and what criteria they use; what tasks emergency managers
perform; and what knowledge, skills and attitudes they need for those
tasks (although, see Thomas and Mileti, 2004, for the findings of a
recent workshop on this last issue). There also is little data about
what resources emergency managers have in their jurisdictions, where
they acquire their job skills, and how their performance is evaluated.
Finally, there is little information about emergency managers'
compensation (pay and benefits) and intangible rewards for the job, as
well as how long they stay in their jobs, why they leave, and where they
go. Such information about emergency managers needs to be collected and
analyzed to identify systematic patterns in the profession as well as
differences by region, state, and jurisdiction size.

*Involvement in Hazard Mitigatio*n

The need for local emergency managers to become involved in hazard
mitigation has been recognized for many years (Anderson & Mattingly,
1991). As noted earlier, Project Impact, generated a legacy of exemplary
public-private partnerships to promote hazard mitigation before being
discontinued after a change in federal administration. A major question
for the future is whether local emergency managers will seize
opportunities to absorb the lessons learned during Project Impact and
apply them without the support of federal funding.

*Involvement in Preimpact Disaster Recovery Planning*

Anderson and Mattingly (1991) noted the recent recognition that the
policies, plans, and procedures needed to facilitate a rapid disaster
recovery must be developed before---not after---disaster strikes. As
Chapter 11 indicated, there has been significant progress on this issue.
Schwab, et al. (1998) provided a detailed guide on preimpact recovery
planning that showed how to integrate hazard mitigation into the
process. Later, Wu and Lindell (2004) reported evidence that preimpact
recovery planning accomplishes both objectives---accelerating housing
recovery and achieving hazard mitigation activities at the same time as
disaster recovery. Preimpact recovery planning also provides additional
opportunities to work with land use planners and building construction
officials. The challenge for the future will be for emergency managers
to work with these other professions to develop preimpact recovery
plans.

*Expansion of the Professional Domain*

The challenges of working with other professions and with academic
disciplines are matched by unparalleled opportunities. Emergency
managers must be ready to respond to a wide variety of hazards
confronting their communities. As we have seen in Chapter 5, this
responsibility can mean dealing with natural events as rare and dramatic
as volcanic eruptions or as common and mundane as heat waves. Similarly,
emergency managers' responsibilities for technological events can be as
unusual as nuclear power plant accidents or as routine as multivehicle
traffic accidents producing mass casualties.

Emergency managers' knowledge and skills in helping their communities
prepare for a wide range of unexpected events can make them invaluable
consultants to senior administrators in managing a wide range of
environmental hazards. Indeed, to the degree that they are successful in
promoting hazard mitigation, they will see a steady decrease in the
amount of time they spend in emergency response. Thus, their role as
*emergency* managers could expand to fill a broader function as
environmental *hazard* managers.

*Regional Collaboration*

Regional collaboration is likely to be an important solution for the
problems created by many types of hazards. Many local jurisdictions
enthusiastically established their own Local Emergency Planning
Committees and hazmat response teams, only to find how expensive it is
to staff, train, and equip an organization that is capable of responding
to even a moderate sized incident. The same problems arise in seeking to
cope with large scale incidents involving other hazards such as
hurricanes and wildfires. Regional collaboration is simply an extension
of the common procedure of establishing Mutual Aid Agreements with
neighboring jurisdictions to provide assistance in emergencies (Lindell
& Perry, 2001). At the most basic level, mutual aid requires at least a
minimal degree of commonality between the organizational structures and
equipment of the requesting and assisting jurisdictions. At a more
advanced level, regional collaboration allows cooperating jurisdictions
to obtain services that neither one alone could afford. Typical
candidates for regional organizations will be functions that have high
cost and infrequent use. As noted earlier, hazmat response teams are
expensive to train and equip but would not be used frequently enough to
justify the expense in most jurisdictions. A regional hazmat response
team would take longer to assemble and respond to an incident, but would
be significantly less expensive to train and equip. In a metropolitan
area (where there are many jurisdictions in close proximity), the lower
cost would be quite likely to offset the additional mobilization time,
but this is much less likely to be the case in rural areas where the
jurisdictions are farther apart. However, a regional
hazard/vulnerability analysis team would not have this type of response
time constraint, so it could be equally feasible for metropolitan and
rural areas. The difference in these two examples should make it clear
that the feasibility of regional approaches might differ significantly
in hazard/vulnerability analysis, hazard mitigation, emergency
preparedness, emergency response, and disaster recovery.

With regional emergency response, and to a lesser extent disaster
recovery, comes the need for standardization because assisting
organizations are of no use if they have incompatible organizational
structures, training, and equipment. As Chapter 11 indicated, many
organizations have enthusiastically endorsed the Incident Command System
(ICS) or Incident Management System (IMS) as a standardized structure
for managing the emergency response organization. Unfortunately, one of
the reasons why everyone likes ICS/IMS is because everyone has a version
they have "adapted" to their own local conditions with a "few"
modifications. Of course, the more ICS/IMS has been "adapted" to local
conditions, the less it is the standardized version of ICS/IMS and, thus
the fewer of the promised advantages of ICS/IMS that actually will be
realized when joint operations must be conducted.

Another approach to standardization can be seen in the recent
development of the Federal Response Plan. This plan might prove to be
successful in promoting a higher level of standardization in the design
of emergency response organizations than has yet been achieved. This is
not to say that complete standardization is likely to be achieved, only
that a higher level might result. The degree of standardization will
depend on the compatibility of the new system with the disparate
structures of thousands of cities and counties in the (also quite
disparate) 50 states. Its success in meeting this objective will depend
on the willingness of federal agencies, especially the Department of
Homeland Security, to engage in a meaningful dialogue with
representatives of a wide range of professional organizations in
emergency management, fire protection, law enforcement, public health,
emergency medicine, public works, and public administration, to name
only a few. In addition, successful adoption of new forms of managing
emergency response organizations will depend on the federal government's
willingness and ability to mandate the new program or to provide
incentives for its adoption and implementation by local government. One
powerful incentive the federal government has used previously is to make
the availability of emergency planning assistance and disaster recovery
assistance funds contingent on local adoption of federal programs. Of
course, the success of this approach depends on the ability of the
mandating agency to monitor compliance. It is easy to obtain letters
from local jurisdictions saying they have *adopted* a program but it is
another matter entirely to verify they have thoroughly *implemented* the
program by modifying their plans, procedures, and training to conform
exactly to the program. To verify complete implementation requires
onsite audits such as those of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
conducts at over 100 nuclear power plants throughout the country.
However, it is not feasible for any agency to conduct similarly thorough
audits in more than ten thousand state and local jurisdictions.
Consequently, national standardization is likely to be a greater
challenge than regional standardization. The degree to which regional
and national standardization is achieved will depend on the success of
current systems in responding successfully to future disasters and the
ingenuity of the next generation of emergency managers.