Shortly after the publication of the first edition of this book, I accepted an invitation from Dr. Wayne Blanchard at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to give a short presentation on the book at the annual Emergency Management Higher Education Program conference in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I was stunned to find myself on stage at a plenary session with Dr. Claire Rubin on one side and Dr. Russell Dynes on the other. The contributions of these two individuals to the discipline of emergency management are almost legendary, and to find that my book was considered worthy of being included in a discussion of their new works was humbling and, frankly, a bit frightening.

Anyone who has authored a book knows that authors are very aware of the shortcomings of their books. There are things you wish you had included, things you wish you had said differently, and things you just got plain wrong. I am no different, and I still cringe when I read parts of the first edition. Consequently, when the opportunity arose to revise my book for a second edition, I jumped at the chance.

Maybe, I should have tested the water before jumping in.

Emergency management is based on the concept of continuous improvement. This makes it a very dynamic field that is constantly evolving. Each disaster, and there have been many since my book was first published in 2007, presents us with new challenges and new solutions. We learn from our experiences and revise our strategies. This dynamic change is reflected in evolving national strategies, strategies that I am gratified to see incorporate some of the concepts I espoused in the first edition of this book.

There have been significant changes in the academic world as well, as emergency management has come into its own as an academic discipline. With the increase in higher education programs and the number of doctoral candidates, we have seen the emergence of academic journals devoted to emergency management and an increase in the volume of research on emergency management issues. Much of this work is being done by a new generation of researchers who are dedicated to this new discipline of emergency management.

Perhaps one of the most significant advances has been the emergence of an accepted definition of emergency management and of the Principles or Emergency Management. One of the major problems in emergency management has been a lack of identity. We still have a long way to go in defining who we are and what we do, but the Principles of Emergency Management project is a major milestone in that journey.

What has not changed, though, is the need for emergency managers to move beyond their traditional role as a response technician to that of a manager with responsibility for formulating program strategy and serving as an advisor to senior officials. The range of threats we face is increasing, particularly in cybersecurity. The rise of social media has drastically changed how we communicate warnings. The 24‐hour news cycle has had a major impact on our media relations. No single individual or small team can handle the diversity of problems we must confront. Now, more than ever, emergency management must be an enterprise‐wide program, and the emergency manager must be forward thinking and capable of seeing beyond just issues of response.

As I said in the preface to the first edition, no book is the sole product of the author, and I have leaned heavily on the work of many others. To my many friends in the academic community, thank you for your enthusiastic reception of my book and your many thoughtful suggestions for improving it. Without your work, this book would not exist. Thank you also to my colleagues and friends in the emergency management community; many of the ideas and concepts in this book came from you and your willingness to share your wisdom. One of the privileges I have enjoyed since the publication of the first edition was the numerous invitations to teach at universities in the United States and in Ireland. To all those students who let me try out new ideas and concepts on them and challenged me to learn more about my profession, thank you. The future is yours and you are up to the challenge.

Very special thanks go to the staff at John Wiley and Sons. This book took much longer than it should have, and throughout it, all my editors were encouraging and understanding. Their patience with this project was greatly appreciated.

And, as always, I am grateful for the love and support of my wife, Doreen. I am constantly amazed at her patience and willingness to put up with crazy ideas.

When on Friday, 24 February 2006, the White House issued a report entitled, The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, one salty emergency manager observed “It ain't a lesson learned until you correct it and prove it works. Until then, it's just an observation.” The White House report was just one of several released around the same time, all saying essentially the same thing: as a nation, the United States is not prepared to deal with catastrophe.

How is this possible? The United States has been in the emergency management business for over 50 years. There are volumes of social science reports on human behavior in disaster. There are detailed records on historical disasters that have occurred in the past 300 years and geological records going back to prehistory. Millions have been spent on building the capacity to respond. Since September 11 there has been an even bigger push to strengthen and enhance emergency response capabilities. And yet, in the biggest test in US history, the system failed at all levels of government.

Despite vows to improve things, little has changed. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 highlighted weaknesses in key infrastructure. The multiple disasters in 2017 severely taxed the United State's ability to respond, particularly on the island of Puerto Rico. These are not, unfortunately, isolated cases. Every disaster seems to generate a list of failures couched as “lessons learned,” along with pledges to improve the system. Few of those pledges are ever implemented. Yet, like Captain Smith, citizens in the United States believe that a sophisticated system of response is in place to protect them from the unthinkable. There is an expectation that, no matter what the event, government will be there to provide immediate and effective relief.

To a certain extent, emergency management in the United States is a victim of its own success. Response is extremely fast compared to other countries, and there is a culture of professionalism among first responders that makes them second to none. However, this has led to the expectation that disaster response is a government responsibility, not a collective one, and there are increased demands for more immediate and detailed services. This is a demand that has obvious limits, as demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina.

Government officials at all levels go out of their way to reinforce these public expectations. In a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Michael Chertoff, at the time Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, encouraged people to be prepared, saying “…you cannot count on help coming in the first 24 or even 48 hours of a catastrophe … people who are prepared with that kind of planning do much better if they have to wait 24–48 hours than people who don't do that planning.” Secretary Chertoff seemed unaware that he had just shortened the normal recommendation of preparing for a minimum of 72 hours by 24–48 hours and further encouraged the public's expectation of immediate response.

It is unheard of for an elected official to admit the truth. Disasters, by definition, overwhelm available local resources. You can never be fully prepared; there is not enough money or political will to fund all the requirements for mitigation and preparedness planning that would ensure full readiness. Preparedness is a balancing act, with most politicians betting that a disaster will not happen on their watch and that the public will not discover the thin veneer that passes for preparedness. Jurisdictions are unprepared, and it is extremely unlikely that they will ever reach the level of preparedness that the public believes already exists. The bar has been set too high to be supported by local, state, or federal government without a major shift of priorities.

However, as one reads after‐action reports and “lessons learned,” one begins to sense commonalities. It is seldom the initial life‐saving response that is criticized. Police, fire, and emergency medical personnel usually get high marks for their efforts in a crisis. Witness the praise deservedly heaped on the US Coast Guard for its rescue of 33 000 victims during Hurricane Katrina (an operation so successful that Secretary Chertoff believed that only Coast Guard admirals were qualified to serve as Principal Federal Officials). Instead, criticism seems to fall into two areas. The first is related to traditional victim services such as sheltering or evacuation. Criticism of victim services usually reflects inadequacy of service or confusion in the delivery of services brought on by poor coordination among relief agencies. Indeed, some social scientists suggest that the biggest problem in disasters is not the impact of the event on the victims but the lack of coordination among multiple responding agencies. This confusion and lack of coordination can impede the delivery of services.

The second major area of criticism relates to long‐term issues. This is usually characterized by conflicts over reconstruction policies. Again, one notes concerns over confusion in the process. There is a lack of coordination and public participation that leads to delays in the rebuilding of a community and the restoration of its economic base. It is during this recovery period that one generally sees the emergence of finger‐pointing and an increase in underlying social tension. There is usually a conflict between citizens who want to rebuild quickly and return the community to the way it was and officials who push for improved structures or social re‐engineering.

Again, one must ask the question “Why?” Why, in a system that has almost 70 years of experience in countless disasters, that has national guidelines, that has millions in government funding, and that has reams of textbooks and social science reports, why is it that the system seems to fail more than it works, and why do those failures always seem to be in the same areas? Can the United States do better?

The fact that these failures seem to occur in almost every disaster and in almost always the same areas would seem to suggest that there is something wrong with the system. Social science suggests some of the reasons. Emergency management issues do not generally engage local officials. In many jurisdictions, the responsibility for developing emergency response capacity rests with a single individual and is usually an additional duty. Emergency planning is viewed as a task centered on the development of a paper plan, and there is no real linkage between emergency management and community goals and vision. Worse, emergency plans incorporate assumptions based on disaster myths that do not reflect the reality of human behavior in disasters.

This book suggests that the United States can do better by changing the nature of emergency management and traditional response. It is time for a different approach, one that is supported by social science and by new national standards for emergency management programs. This approach is based on the concept that emergency management is a distributed process, one that must be collectively performed by the community. This suggests that emergency management must be integrated with other community goals and, as such, must be perceived as adding value to the community. This added value is achieved by helping the community manage overall risk. The community‐wide approach also holds implications for the emergency manager. Instead of being a technical expert on emergency operations, the emergency manager becomes a program manager whose job is to facilitate the development of a community strategy for managing risk and to oversee the enterprise‐wide implementation of that strategy. This focus on strategy allows all the various components of the community to work together to achieve a common vision of resilience.

The first four chapters of this book focus on the three pillars on which successful emergency management is based: an understanding of history, knowledge of social science research, and technical expertise in emergency management operations. The chapters also provide insight as how emergency management has evolved and suggest reasons why the current method of response planning does not work as well as it should.

Chapter 1 briefly looks at the historical underpinnings of emergency management up to the 1950s. Chapter 2 focuses on the development of a national strategy for disaster response and a disaster bureaucracy. Chapter 3 traces the emergence of emergency management theory through the work of social scientists. Chapter 4 considers the changing role of the emergency manager.

Chapter 5 discusses establishing and administering the emergency management program. Traditionally, emergency management “programs” have been a collection of activities with only vague relation to each other, primarily driven by federal grants. Chapter 5 provides a mechanism for addressing program governance and oversight and for linking program elements through a strategic plan.

Chapter 6 considers the analysis of risk as the basis for strategy development. It considers both the traditional macro view of hazard identification and analysis as well as the micro view required for continuity planning.

Chapter 7 covers strategy development, a major weakness in many emergency management programs. The focus is not so much on individual strategies as it is on the interface between the strategies. It is this conceptual basis that helps build the flexibility needed in disaster response.

Chapters 8 and 9 focus planning and on the development of the various plans needed within the emergency management program. The chapters are more concerned with the planning process than with specific plans and with operational planning issues rather than field operations. Chapter 8 discusses planning concepts, whereas Chapter 9 suggests methodologies to translate these concepts into actual plans.

Chapter 10 considers issues related to operational response. It discusses the pros and cons of incident management systems and suggests a coordination methodology that may prove more effective than traditional command and control structures.

Chapter 11 looks at leadership, both in the day‐to‐day administration of the emergency management program and during response to a crisis. The chapter draws a distinction between the leadership styles demanded by each and looks at models that might assist in increasing the effectiveness of leadership during a crisis.

Chapter 12 focuses on the roles and responsibilities of senior officials in the management of strategic response. It suggests that the normal involvement of the senior officials in the emergency operations center may be counterproductive and suggests new ways of managing disasters using crisis management principles.

Together, the chapters make a case for a change in how emergency management programs are integrated into communities and in the role of the emergency manager. These changes are consistent with the direction of the National Preparedness Standard and the current guidance provided by the Department of Homeland Security and are supported by social science research. It is hoped that they might point toward a more effective system of disaster response.