Shedding light on the impacts that climate change and associated natural disasters continue to have on emergency management capabilities and communities across the country, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has released its 2022 National Preparedness Report.
This year’s report presents preparedness data through the lens of risks and capabilities and underscores the challenges that emergency managers face in addressing a continuously expanding risk environment, the ingenuity they have shown to rise to those challenges and opportunities that remain to better prepare the nation.
The report functions as a guide for emergency managers and whole-community partners across the nation to help support decisions about programme priorities, resource allocations and community actions.
“This report was developed during a pivotal time in emergency management. The range and complexity of the disasters our nation faces continue to rapidly evolve, fuelled in part by climate change. Our ‘new normal’ also includes pandemics, domestic terrorism and cyberattacks,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. “These changing risks shift expectations on the emergency management community, but I know they will rise to the occasion, as will the dedicated workforce here at FEMA. The National Preparedness Report details these areas of change and remains a critical marker of national preparedness, highlighting our areas of strength and those in which we can improve as a whole community in becoming a more resilient nation.”
The report summarises the state of national preparedness, discussing the risks the nation faces and how those risks drive whole-community emergency management capability requirements.
Among its key findings, the report revealed that in 2021, 92% of communities identified at least one natural hazard associated with climate change as being most stressful to emergency management capabilities in their assessments. The US experienced a total of $20 billion climate and weather-related disasters.
Click here for the report.