Part 6 of 6
For anyone ready to act on the rest of it: departments that have done this work, the research and standards behind it, what good should look like, and what to do first when the budget is small.
Start with risk, not software.
Not a maturity model and not a score. A list to hold your own program against, and a reasonable standard to hold a vendor to.
The measure of an emergency management system is not how impressive it looks on a normal day. It is whether people can still make good decisions when the community is having its worst one.
No jurisdiction needs a purpose-built EOC or an enterprise platform to be better at this than it was last year. Most of the capability on this page is a conversation, a written page and a phone call.
Sit down with whoever is in the room and answer these.
Then fix one weakness. Then the next one. A jurisdiction that does this every year for five years is unrecognisable; one that waits for the platform is exactly where it started.
Incidents whose lessons were documented and published by somebody with no product to sell. Each entry says what kind of account it is, because a technical investigation and an after-action report answer different questions.
The deadliest single tornado on record in the United States since 1950, and a federal investigation that examined not only how the buildings failed but how the warning was received, understood and acted on.
Public warning · Situational awareness · Risk assessment
FEMA's own after-action review of a season in which Texas, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico were all in response at the same time. The subject is coordination under simultaneous strain.
EOC operations · Resource management · Planning
How lifelines moved from a construct to the way major incidents are reported, tested across a run of real events — and what the peer-reviewed literature makes of it.
Community lifelines · EOC operations · Situational awareness
Doctrine, guidance and peer-reviewed research on emergency management. Every address here was opened and checked. Narrow the list by subject.
How to write and maintain an emergency operations plan: the process, who belongs in the room, and what the finished plan has to contain.
Why it matters
The answer to 'our plan exists but nobody can use it'. Most of the failure modes on this page are addressed here first.
The eight lifelines and their components. Water Systems was added on 1 August 2023, and the food lifeline was renamed at the same time, when drinking water and wastewater moved out of it.
Why it matters
The most decision-useful way of reporting an incident to come along in twenty years: it describes what a community has lost rather than which agencies are busy. Note the count — a great deal of material still in circulation says seven.
The doctrine that lets agencies who have never worked together run one incident: common terminology, modular organisation, resource management and information flow.
Why it matters
Everything else here assumes it. It is also the answer to a vendor who wants you to change how you organise an incident to suit their software — doctrine first, product second.
The complete NIMS document as published in 2017.
Why it matters
The source itself, for when a summary is not enough and you need the wording in front of you.
The working tools behind the doctrine: resource management and typing, command and coordination including the EOC toolkit, and communications and information management.
Why it matters
Where the EOC Toolkit, the Quick Reference Guide and the resource typing tools actually live.
The hub for the National Preparedness System, the Goal, the planning frameworks and the reports built on them.
Why it matters
The map of how the pieces relate, which is hard to work out from any one document.
The Goal and the core capabilities beneath it, organised across the five mission areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response and recovery.
Why it matters
The capability list is the vocabulary a THIRA is written in. Worth reading before writing a capability gap into a grant application.
The six-part process: identify and assess risk, estimate capability requirements, build and sustain capabilities, plan to deliver them, validate them, and review and update.
Why it matters
This is the loop this page is about, in FEMA's own words. Risk first, software a long way later.
One framework for each of the five mission areas, describing how the whole community works together in each.
Why it matters
Useful for seeing where a jurisdiction sits inside something much larger, and who is expected to do what.
How the nation responds to all hazards: the roles, the coordinating structures, and the community lifelines construct.
Why it matters
The clearest published statement of how field command, the EOC and the layers above them are meant to relate — the subject of the ICS-and-EOC section of this page.
FEMA's index of planning guidance, including the Comprehensive Preparedness Guides.
Why it matters
The entry point when somebody has told you to write or revise a plan and you do not know which guide applies.
The method behind THIRA and the SPR: identify threats and hazards, describe their impacts, set capability targets, then assess honestly what you can currently do.
Why it matters
The document behind 'start with risk, not software', and the standard your own risk assessment will be read against.
The programme the THIRA and SPR belong to, and what is done with the results once submitted.
Why it matters
Explains why you are being asked for this, not only how to fill it in.
FEMA's exercise hub: the programme, the guidance and the supporting tools.
Why it matters
The starting point for a department that has decided to stop validating its plan and start testing it.
The common methodology for designing, conducting, evaluating and improving on exercises, from a workshop to a full-scale.
Why it matters
The part worth taking is the back half. Designing an exercise is the easy bit; the corrective action process is what turns one into a capability.
Templates, guidance and tools for continuing essential functions when normal facilities, staff or systems are unavailable.
Why it matters
Where the section on what happens when your own systems are part of the disaster begins.
The document library behind the continuity toolkit.
Why it matters
Where the Continuity Guidance Circular and the continuity templates are published.
How to use lifelines in an operation: the components and subcomponents, how status is assessed, and how it is reported.
Why it matters
The difference between saying 'we use lifelines' and being able to say what green, yellow and red mean for Energy at 0600.
A short guide to how an EOC is organised, staffed and operated, and how it relates to incident command.
Why it matters
The thing to hand somebody who is about to work in an EOC for the first time.
FEMA's collection of EOC tools in a single download: organisational models, position guidance and supporting references.
Why it matters
Most of what a jurisdiction needs to set up or reorganise an EOC, without buying anything.
The federal system behind Wireless Emergency Alerts, the Emergency Alert System and the other public warning channels, including how a jurisdiction gains authority to use it.
Why it matters
Sending the alert is the easy half. This is where the authority, the training and the message limits come from.
FEMA's own collection of documented incidents and programmes.
Why it matters
Where to read what another jurisdiction actually did, from a source that is not selling anything.
The guidance for continuity of operations and continuity of government: essential functions, orders of succession, delegations of authority, alternate facilities, vital records and the rest.
Why it matters
The checklist behind 'what if the EOC cannot be occupied'. Most of the continuity questions on this page come from here.
FEMA's programme office for continuous improvement, and the entry point to the technical assistance behind it.
Why it matters
Where to go when the honest answer to 'what happened to the last after-action report' is that nobody knows.
How to run continuous improvement before, during and after real incidents, in four phases: discovery, validation, resolution and evaluation. Written for the whole community, not only for government.
Why it matters
The document behind 'after-action without action is just a report'. Its resolution phase is the part almost everyone skips.
FEMA's set of tools for resource typing, inventorying and ordering under NIMS.
Why it matters
The answer to 'we do not know what we have or how to ask for more', and it costs nothing.
The inventorying half of the Resource Hub: recording what a jurisdiction actually has, typed so that somebody else can understand it.
Why it matters
Doing this before an incident is the entire point of the resource management section on this page.
The national catalogue of resource typing definitions and position qualifications — what a Type 3 anything actually means.
Why it matters
So that a request for a resource means the same thing to the agency sending it as to the one asking. This is where interoperability starts, and it is a catalogue rather than a purchase.
FEMA's training arm, including the Independent Study programme that is free and open to anyone.
Why it matters
The cheapest way to get a whole department speaking the same language. Note the NDEMU branding — a lot of older material still says EMI and links elsewhere.
The free self-study course covering what emergency management is, across all four phases and the whole community.
Why it matters
If somebody has just been handed emergency management on top of their real job, this is the first thing to send them.
The public-facing preparedness campaign: hazard-by-hazard guidance written for residents rather than for agencies.
Why it matters
The material to point residents at, in the language they will actually be given it in — worth knowing before writing your own.
DHS's research arm, including work on responder technology, communications and situational awareness.
Why it matters
Where technology claims get tested by somebody with no product to sell.
NIST's community resilience programme, including its planning guide and the research behind how buildings and infrastructure recover.
Why it matters
The engineering half of resilience, which the emergency management literature tends to leave out.
What the National Weather Service provides to emergency managers beyond a public forecast: interpretation aimed at the decision in front of you.
Why it matters
Many emergency managers do not know they can get a meteorologist on the phone, or into the EOC. This is how.
A systematic review of 80 papers asking what anyone actually means by community resilience. It found no agreed definition, and nine elements common across the definitions in use: local knowledge, community networks and relationships, communication, health, governance and leadership, resources, economic investment, preparedness, and mental outlook.
Why it matters
Worth reading before writing 'resilience' into a grant application or a strategic plan. The word is used confidently by people meaning different things, and this is the paper that shows how differently.
A systematic review of the models and tools that have been built to measure community disaster resilience, and what each of them actually assesses.
Why it matters
If you are being sold a resilience score, this is the survey of where such scores come from and what they were designed to measure. Useful for asking a vendor which model theirs is based on.
A systematic review of how emergency communication and community resilience act on each other, drawn from the public health literature.
Why it matters
The evidence behind the argument in the public warning section: reaching people is a communication problem shaped by trust and community relationships, not a broadcasting problem solved by more channels.
A concept for a common operating picture that filters what it shows according to the role and context of the person looking at it, developed by imitating human cognitive processes, with the aim of reducing information overload.
Why it matters
The research behind the argument that a COP is not a bigger map. It treats the problem as one of showing the right person the right subset, which is exactly the failure mode of a screen that shows everyone everything.
A systematic review of the instruments used to measure situation awareness in emergency settings, and what they were found to show. It reports a small number of applicable tools, tested in heterogeneous populations, with generalisability open to question.
Why it matters
Before claiming a system improves situational awareness, it is worth knowing how thinly the ability to measure that is evidenced. This is the honest state of the measurement problem.
A scoping review of what technology has actually contributed to situational awareness and preparedness in disaster medicine, and where the contribution is asserted rather than shown.
Why it matters
The most recent of these, and the one closest to the question this page keeps asking: which of the claims made for emergency management technology are supported.
Nothing here is paid placement. Links are chosen because they are the clearest explanation we could find, and labeled so you know who wrote them.
In that order: risk, then the capability it requires, then the process that delivers it, then — last — the product that supports the process. Every link below goes to a category that exists on this site.
Nothing listed on this site is endorsed by it. The listings describe what a vendor says it does; the questions to ask are further up this page.
Twenty questions on how your department selects, manages, integrates, secures and evaluates its technology. It takes about ten minutes, the results are reported in aggregate, and no department is named.
Take the Technology Readiness Study