Resilience in Emergency Management Research

The article “Emergency Management Research and Practice in Public Administration: Emergence, Evolution, Expansion, and Future Directions” by Louise K. Comfort, William L. Waugh, Jr., and Beverly A. Cigler is interesting and informative about the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the formation of its fellows program with the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. It also provides a good overview of the evolution of research efforts in the field of emergency managements during the past three decades. The authors provide a context for future emergency management research and education, but they address past patterns of emergence, evolution, and expansion in much greater detail than future directions. In 2012 and beyond, research and practice, in my view, will become more interdisciplinary, focusing on intentional, technical, and natural disasters. Increased attention will be given to merging the fields of homeland security and emergency management in higher education, research, and practice. One driver of the merger of fields is increased emphasis on resilience as a policy goal. Resilience is most often defined as the ability to adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to emergencies (Obama 2011). The concept of resilience has been studied for more than 30 years in engineering, biology, psychology, and social sciences. In engineering, the term is applied to materials and technical systems. In biology, it means the perseverance of organisms and life systems. In psychology, it means the perseverance of human beings during crises and their interaction with social systems. In social science, it refers to a workable alternative to anticipation because of the need to prepare for the unknown rather than using a rational paradigm of goal–means thinking (Wildavsky 1988). In the future, research needs to address resilience from a public administration perspective to more effectively use interdisciplinary research in order to answer the big questions of government and society that defy traditional quantitative measurement. A by-product of interdisciplinary research needs to be a better understanding of community resilience. Community resilience may be best defined today as the outcome of a long-term process, but a shared definition across disciplines has yet to materialize (Comfort, Boin, and Demchak 2010). Examples of community resilience are available to guide us. More than 20 years ago, for instance, Los Angeles created a predisaster plan for postearthquake rebuilding that the Association of Bay Area Governments is now using as a model for its long-term recovery plan. To be more specific, community resilience is defined today by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the creation of structures and procedures to ensure a geographic area’s capability to continue to operate critical systems such as communications even during a disaster and to rapidly restart all essential systems that allow a human society to be supported and to continue based on key mission areas: anticipate, prepare, mitigate, respond, recover, learn, and readjust (DHS 2011). The academic contribution to an improved understanding of community, organizational, and societal resilience may bring the disciplines together toward a more effective and coherent sociotechnical approach to better mitigate disasters. First, this will require research about evolving technologies such as cyberterrorism and cybersecurity and documentation of the role of emergency management in the private sector and the value public–private partnerships for coordinated response and recovery. This will also mean taking advantage of what has been learned by the military in preparing for and responding to catastrophes of many kinds. Second, it means creating postsecondary degrees that address resilience as part of degree programs, as is currently being done in Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. By doing so, new leaders in emergency management and homeland security will have the skills necessary to build and deliver resilience. Finally, future research should document and provide measureable outcomes regarding the following: Making multilevel governance work with higher levels of governance, facilitating rather than managing how resilience strategies are developed and delivered Engaging citizens in understanding risks and preparing for them Facilitating rapid learning and situational awareness of all decision makers using modern technology Improving situational awareness for first responders through the more effective use of communications systems and technology Improving international cooperation so as to better understand how international institutions can contribute before and during a disaster Determining the price of resilience because the opportunity costs may exceed the benefits in some instances.