A Whole Community Approach to Local Emergency Management: Antecedents and Impacts

• In Event: Partnering for Community Resilience: Collaborative Approaches for Hazards, Emergency Management, and First Responders

Abstract

A challenge to effective emergency management response is providing services to diverse set of stakeholders.  Recognizing government-centric approach to emergency management insufficient to address this challenge, over the past decade the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has promoted a “Whole Community” approach to local emergency management.  The whole community approach emphasizes collaboration across this diverse set of stakeholders- including residents, emergency management practitioners, organizational and community leaders, and government officials - to “conduct the business of emergency management.” This includes collectively assessing the needs of  the communities that emergency management agencies serve and determining the best ways to organize and strengthen their assets, capabilities, and interests. Although the whole community approach is considered a more effective strategy to build societal security and resilience in the face of external shocks, existing literature about the actual adoption and effectiveness of this approach is limited. While this concept is related to established emergency management research on coordination, stakeholder networks and collaborative governance, it also entails leveraging these partnerships for collective risk assessment, capacity building, and decision-making.

In this study, we empirically examine the extent to which local emergency management agencies (EMAs) take a whole community approach, the factors influencing its adoption, and its effectiveness in serving vulnerable populations. Our analysis draws on the data from a 2024 national survey of county-level EMAs across the U.S. Specifically, survey included multiple items measuring different aspects of the whole community approach, such as identifying community risks and needs; including different community groups in all phases in emergency management; coordinating with other government organizations or community groups (including private/business organizations), and leveraging existing social networks. Using factor analysis, we find that all these variables load on a single latent factor, which we use to construct a composite index representing the extent of adopting a whole community approach. We find that agencies with more organizational resources and staffing, as well as agencies located in counties with a stronger presence of social service profits and more Democratic voters, are more inclined to take a whole community approach. This result highlights both the internal capacity factors and external environment that influence the adoption of this approach.

We further test whether the adoption of a whole community approach results in more inclusive organizational practices for a highly vulnerable group, people with disabilities (PWD). Specifically, we assess a range of organizational actions, such as incorporating PWD into risk assessments and emergency plans, allocating resources to or establishing protocols for serving PWD, staff training, and intergovernmental coordination. Our results suggest a significant, positive correlation between the whole community approach and disability inclusion practices. Among the various components of this approach, we find that an agency’s capacity to leverage existing social networks and engage community groups have a particularly strong effect. Overall, our study contributes to the existing emergency management literature as one of the first few examining the adoption of a whole community approach, the antecedents for its adoption, and its implications for inclusive emergency management practices.  

Authors

• Qing Miao, Rochester Institute of Technology
  Presenting Author

• Fengxiu Zhang, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author