Crisis Management in an Intelligence Perspective: A Literature Review

ABSTRACT This article examines how intelligence is conceptualised across the crisis management cycle and what this reveals about the governance of uncertainty in contemporary crises. Using a qualitative narrative literature review, the study analyses relevant scholarship on intelligence and crisis management, complemented by selected institutional documents to capture policy and practice dimensions. The review finds that intelligence performs distinct but interconnected functions across the pre‐crisis, crisis response and post‐crisis phases. In the pre‐crisis phase, intelligence supports anticipation through early warning, risk identification, threat assessment and strategic foresight. During crisis response, it contributes to situational awareness, decision support, communication management and inter‐agency coordination. In the post‐crisis phase, intelligence becomes evaluative and adaptive, informing damage assessment, policy learning, institutional reform and strategic recalibration. At the same time, intelligence‐led crisis management is constrained by recurring tensions, including cognitive bias, organisational fragmentation, politicisation, secrecy and information overload. Emerging developments such as OSINT, artificial intelligence, disinformation and cyber instability further expand intelligence capabilities while also generating new challenges of legitimacy, accountability and epistemic reliability. The article argues that crisis management is best understood not only as operational coordination but also as a form of epistemic governance.