What's Next for Emergency Management in 2021?
Emergency Managers are still mending to our wounds and catching up on lost sleep from 2020. What can we expect from 2021?
It’s important to prepare for what lies ahead for the emergency management field. In the shadow of the largest pandemic in the past 100 years, I share some of my abbreviated thoughts and predictions on where we go as a profession from here to better serve our communities.
1) Budgets will be tight. Federal, State, and Local budget deficits will impact emergency management offices across the country. The City of Los Angeles is in the hole nearly $675 million. While it might be easier justify cuts from emergency management than law enforcement, public health, and fire, no services will be immune. Funding from homeland security grants will be reallocated to plug holes and maintain baseline requirements while putting new projects and capability development on ice.
2) Disasters will only continue to evolve and increase in frequency. It seems like each new year is the hottest on record. According to NWS, extreme heat was the leading cause of weather-related fatalities in 2019. Increase in temperatures also fuel wild fires, hurricanes, and severe storms.
Economic hardships will further limit a family’s ability to properly prepare for emergency incidents. It’s a hard sell to American families to purchase more insurance when the basics can’t even be met.
Emergency management thrives on the power to convene people. Our new virtual environment will present challenges in cultivating relationships with key partners with limited face to face interactions.
Terror organizations will try to take advantage of this situation if we let our guard down.
Oh, and COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
3) Opportunities remain. Perhaps instead of continuously trying to justify our existence to public and elected officials we double down on what we are good at and drop everything else. Stop spreading emergency managers so thin by chasing the next new thing. I know how hard it is to say “no” but let’s learn. To use a consulting term, we need to clearly define our scope of work. Focus on operational coordination, situational assessment, intelligence and information sharing, and public information and warning within the community lifelines.
Let our products and services do the talking for us.
What Big Ideas do you think we will emerge in the Emergency Management field in 2021? Share your thoughts and make your predictions!
Cybersecurity. Space. Disasters.
4yJustin Pierce Great insight and I'd be happy to read more of your thoughts.
Disaster Resiliency Professional “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” - Alexander Hamilton
4yEnjoyed reading through everyone’s comments... great input. I’m really interested to see the intersection between EM and community/economic development/urban planning, etc... how to tie in P3 with preparedness, including whole community risk mitigation strategies upfront to achieve more resilient regions.
Director of Emergency Management at Stanford University
4yJust as we shifted post-9/11 into prevention, and given the increasing organizational costs of disaster, emergency management will continue to move from a public safety function to include more executive/policy roles including risk mitigation, cost control, and delineation of authorities.