Improving Assessments in Emergency Management

Communities face increasingly frequent and intense storms, year-round wildfire seasons, simultaneous disasters, and human-caused threats, including cyberattacks, terrorism, and infrastructure failures. Existing approaches to documenting threats and hazards and assessing risk might not work as well as they once did. Moreover, the increased magnitude of weather disasters and unexpected threats, such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), have strained many communities' capacities and resources. Communities therefore require tools to assess and prepare for the threats and hazards they might face.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires two assessments for communities participating in certain grant programs: a threat and hazard identification and risk assessment (THIRA) and a hazard identification and risk assessment (HIRA). A THIRA identifies likely hazards and threats that stress core capabilities, while a HIRA targets hazards and threats that could damage jurisdictional assets, infrastructure, and lifelines. FEMA asked the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center to comprehensively review THIRA and HIRA processes and offer options for improvement, including reducing burden on communities. Researchers also investigated whether THIRAs and HIRAs could be better aligned with one another or integrated into a single assessment. They evaluated overlap between THIRAs and HIRAs, burden on communities, responsiveness to threats and hazards, how THIRA and HIRA information is used, equity in assessments, and whether they achieve their intended purposes. In this report, they provide their findings and a series of options for FEMA's consideration for addressing them.