Emergency management (EM) practice has never been more important. Disasters are occurring with growing frequency, driven by a broadening set of hazards and increasing vulnerability to them. Disasters are often compounding and cascading, and more and more people and communities are suffering. The Federal Emergency Management Agency therefore launched the National Disaster and Emergency Management University (NDEMU) to serve as a center for thought leadership in the field, offer education and training, and promote research.
NDEMU has an inherent interest in identifying and synthesizing a body of EM-related research and supporting its translation into practice through education and training. The benefits of a synthesized body of EM research would accrue not just to NDEMU but also to the myriad students from EM practice who have and will participate in the institution’s in-person and online education and training courses. The corpus of EM research, however, has not yet been identified or organized, much less synthesized to inform NDEMU education and training. NDEMU asked the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) to map the EM research landscape.
This report describes HSOAC’s attempt to identify and map a body of EM research and discusses the implications of the mapping effort. The report concludes with recommendations regarding for facilitating the identification and organization of this research so that it might be synthesized and translated into education; training; and, ultimately, practice.
