Charting a Course for Emergency Management
Insights from the Literature, 2020–2023
ResearchPublished Jan 14, 2025
This report provides a foundation for new thought leadership in emergency management by aggregating top issues in the field, identifying priorities for a research agenda, and suggesting ways for practitioners and researchers to engage with and learn from each other. Its literature review includes both peer-reviewed literature and practitioner-oriented sources such as after-action reports and congressional documents.
The field of emergency management is changing rapidly. Emergency managers are being asked to carry out new missions—in particular, public health preparedness and response (as shown during the 2019 coronavirus pandemic), as well as addressing the consequences of increasingly frequent and severe weather events. As a result, and based on the insight that many emergency management approaches apply across all types of disasters, the field is moving toward an expanded all-hazards approach.
As one step toward understanding these changes and charting a path forward for emergency management, the authors of this report assess the current state of thinking about the field by conducting literature reviews and analyses of both scholarly and practitioner-oriented sources, aggregating top issues in the field, identifying priorities for a research agenda, and suggesting ways for practitioners and researchers to engage with and learn from each other. While the report includes key findings and recommendations for emergency management going forward, it also serves as a pilot for a regular review of current issues in the emergency management field.
Key Findings
- Preparedness and response were discussed more frequently than mitigation and recovery across all source types between 2020 and 2023. In addition, sources expressed a degree of uncertainty about climate resilience, which suggests that its consequences for disaster risk were not well articulated or understood. Infectious disease was the most frequently mentioned hazard during the 2020–2023 period; other climate-related slow-onset events such as drought may be understudied.
- Equity is frequently discussed by both practitioners and researchers, but less so by congressional committees. Practitioners highlighted problems in communication more than others. They also paid greater attention to individual disasters than to overall issues and trends in the field.
- Global security trends reflected an increasing focus on climate, environment, and health threats from 2021 to 2023.
Recommendations
- Link mitigation and recovery to a holistic understanding of disaster risk, and improve mitigation and recovery strategies so as to reduce disaster losses and overall costs.
- Provide guidance for emergency managers and their stakeholders to understand what climate resilience means for them, how uncertainty should be considered, and what they can to do build resilience in their spheres of influence.
- Devote resources and attention to studying the mechanisms behind slow-onset events, including those related to climate change.
- Identify policy-applicable strategies to improve equity in emergency management.
- Analyze the causes of communication breakdowns, and provide systematic guidance for how to most effectively conduct and structure after-action reports.
- Create opportunities for broader and more sustained practitioner input into the emergency management research agenda.
- Reflect on global trends, and consider what they could mean for emergency management in the United States.
- Analyze trends to identify the potential for different threats to combine to produce new dangers.
Topics
Document Details
- Availability: Available
- Year: 2025
- Print Format: Paperback
- Paperback Pages: 74
- Paperback Price: $24.00
- Paperback ISBN/EAN: 1-9774-1329-3
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA2980-1
- Document Number: RR-A2980-1
Citation
RAND Style Manual
Roberts, Patrick S., Katie A. Wilson, Sally J. Calengor, Christopher Dictus, Clay Strickland, and Jay Balagna, Charting a Course for Emergency Management: Insights from the Literature, 2020–2023, RAND Corporation, RR-A2980-1, 2025. As of April 8, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2980-1.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Roberts, Patrick S., Katie A. Wilson, Sally J. Calengor, Christopher Dictus, Clay Strickland, and Jay Balagna, Charting a Course for Emergency Management: Insights from the Literature, 2020–2023. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2980-1.html. Also available in print form.
Research conducted by
This research was sponsored by NDEMU within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and conducted in the Disaster Management and Resilience Program of the RAND Homeland Security Research Division.
This publication is part of the RAND research report series. Research reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND research reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.
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