Introduction

We live in challenging, uncertain, and dangerous times. The world is changing fast and having a massive impact on homeland and national security. We are in a time of increasing intensification of natural disasters, leading to more severe hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and other catastrophic events.[1] Our built environment is increasingly at risk with increased vulnerability and exposure to extreme weather events. Billion-dollar disasters are becoming more frequent and increasingly dangerous, threatening communities across the nation, with 28-billion-dollar events in 2023. Yet this is only one of the challenges that the emergency management community is being called on to address.  On top of this, the rapid advancement of technology, while beneficial, also brings new risks we’re not fully prepared for. Emergency managers provide the key intersections in addressing these issues, but their roles are expanding, and resources aren’t keeping up. To meet these challenges, emergency managers require innovative tools that can scale and evolve as emergency manager’s workload and responsibilities expand.

This series will focus on how the Community Lifeline Status System (CLSS), developed to enable states to more readily assess and report on lifeline impact status, can serve as a foundation to address key capability gaps facing the emergency management community. G&H International has worked alongside DHS S&T and FEMA to support its mission to the homeland and build solutions for more resilient communities. In development of CLSS we have conducted hundreds of workshops with emergency management agencies and professionals across the nations. We’ve heard several cross jurisdictional challenges that have shaped the current realities of emergency management. These noted hurdles provide the benchmark in which we are looking to overcome for the emergency operations center of the future.

Challenge #1: Operationalizing Community Lifelines

At the core of emergency response is maintaining the lifeline of a community’s critical services —power, water, healthcare, transportation. FEMA’s Community Lifeline construct provides a conceptual foundation for monitoring, assessing and community priorities surrounding these critical services, but the reality on the ground is far more complex. Operationalizing lifelines to communicate a community’s reality of impact is no small feat.

At present, there is no standard or framework in place to operationalize the Community Lifeline construct for our nation’s emergency management agencies. This leads to inefficiencies, slow decision-making, and gaps in response. The challenge isn’t just having the right framework in place; it’s making sure we have the tools and workflows that allow EOCs to be flexible and quickly assess the status of lifelines and respond in real-time.

Challenge #2: Empowering Data for Decision-Making

Over the past decade or so, access to data sources within EOC operations have flowed from a few into a flood. While emergency management may be awash in access— more data doesn’t always mean streamlined analysis, decision-making, or communications. In fact, it often means the opposite. EOCs are mired in information from countless sources on disparate systems. Without the right tools to sift through it all, data can be more of a burden than a benefit. 

On one hand, emergency managers have too much data. On the other, they don’t have enough of the actionable information streamlined into an EOC’s “thought framework” to facilitate timely decisions. Data management is also resource intensive. It requires time to map plans to action, understanding of needs, and human capital—all of which are in short supply during a disaster. And while data is critical to making informed decisions, preparing that data for future technologies, like AI, is an expensive, long-term investment that many local agencies can’t afford. 

Challenge #3: Getting Ahead of the Disaster Curve

In many ways, the future of emergency management is about proactive anticipation—building tools and systems that can help us prepare and respond to what's coming, not just reacting to what's happening.
Investing in mitigation and protection is essential. A great portion of that investment is ensuring that the data we collect today can be used tomorrow. The tools we create need to be adaptable, more responsive, AI-ready, understandable, and scalable. This is not just about improving response times or making better decisions in the moment; it's about laying the foundation for a future where we inter-connect data, operational systems, and prioritized needs one step ahead of the disaster curve.

Challenge #4: Information Sharing in a Complex Environment

While FEMA plays a critical role in setting the foundations for national disaster response, a community’s disaster life cycle begins and ends at the local levels. Local agencies are first on scene and bear the brunt of managing disasters in real time, in a fast-moving operational tempo. However, the tools, workflows, and resources available to these agencies are often fragmented and not built with their unique challenges and pace in mind.
Local and state regulations, varying and often inflexible data systems, and jurisdictional governance make it complex to build nimble, cohesive and integrated solutions. Add to that the challenge of aligning these systems with federal standards, and it becomes clear that integration is anything but simple. And this is all before considering the challenge of integrating secure, or private datasets.

Challenge #5: Engaging Diverse Stakeholders

Emergency management is the nexus that connects each facet of a community; before, during, and after disaster strikes. Yet, emergency managers are not experts in the areas they bridge together. Instead, they build mutual understanding and respect between experts from various fields, whether it's infrastructure, public health, cybersecurity, or logistics, or public safety to understand, from the expert's lens, the needs and nuances of the crises they're managing to facilitate a better response. 

The challenge is that emergency managers must gather critical, specialized information from a wide range of community agencies and stakeholders many of whom are not part of (or often aware of) the emergency management function. Engaging political leadership, community leaders, public health officials, and the public is essential. Emergency managers need systems in place to communicate effectively with each of these groups and translate technical expertise into actionable decisions for disaster response. 

What’s Next?

In this series, we'll explore these challenges, offering deeper insights into potential solutions. From operationalizing community lifelines to leveraging cross jurisdictional data and integrating future technologies, this series will outline how emergency management evolves into meeting the ever-increasing complexity of disasters. The future of disaster response depends on addressing these challenges head-on, and that journey starts here. 

[1] 2023: A historic year of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters | NOAA Climate.gov