Building resilience: The history and future of US crisis management

 Crisis managed?

Building resilience: The history and future of US crisis management

McKinsey, August 22, 2022 | Article

By Tony D’Emidio, Zoe Fox, Jon Spaner, and Ophelia Usher

The crisis management community has made great progress on building resilience in the past two decades, but much work remains to prepare for a future of more frequent and damaging disasters.

Two decades have passed since the tragic events of 9/11 and the subsequent implementation of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This landmark legislation spurred the largest reorganization of the US federal government since the National Security Act of 1947, uniting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with 21 other organizations under the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS).1

Since 9/11, the crisis management community has made great strides in addressing the negative impacts of disasters on American lives and livelihoods. Congressional appropriations for disaster response and recovery have increased to historic levels, with FEMA allocating $45 billion between 2017 and 2020 to disaster relief and financial aid.2 New approaches to recovery and mitigation have emerged, including the development of the National Response Framework and the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. Federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) agencies are more integrated and coordinate more effectively. Indeed, the past two decades have seen significant progress. Yet new challenges are emerging, and the crisis management community will need to work hard to overcome them over the next 20 years.

In this article, we acknowledge the significant progress made by the crisis management community since the signing of the Homeland Security Act and review the data suggesting that the next two decades may bring more frequent and worse disasters affecting more people. We then explore five questions that the community can consider to ensure the security, resilience, and prosperity of communities in the future.

We explore five questions that the crisis management community can consider to ensure the security, resilience, and prosperity of communities in the future.   ....'